A: Have you submitted your term-end paper to the professor? B: Not yet. I’m still making changes at the 11th hour. Note: This idiom might have originated from the Bible: “And when they came that were hired about the 11th hour they received every man a denarius.” The passage is a reference to the fact that the workers who took over at the 11th hour of a 12-hour workday received just as much pay at those who had been working all day. Some scholars have narrowed a specific time for the 11th hour down to the time between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., because the typical workday was from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Whether or not the Bible housed the phrase’s original meaning, it is now an allusion to something that happens at the last possible moment. |