Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A device, such as a clock or sundial, used in telling time.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A piece of mechanism for indicating the hours of the day; a clock; a time-piece of any kind.
  • noun One who tells the hour; a servant formerly employed to call out or announce the hours.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete A servant who called out the hours.
  • noun An instrument indicating the time of day; a timepiece of any kind; a watch, clock, or dial.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete : A clock or watch.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a measuring instrument or device for keeping time

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English orloge, from Old French, from Latin hōrologium, from Greek hōrologion : hōrā, hour, season; see yēr- in Indo-European roots + legein, to speak; see leg- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin horologium, "sundial" or "clock".

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Examples

  • And taking out his horologe (which hung in a small side-pocket of his embroidered surcoat), the crusader consoled himself by finding that it was but seven of the night, and that he would reach Godesberg ere the warder had sounded the second gong.

    Burlesques 2006

  • And taking out his horologe (which hung in a small side-pocket of his embroidered surcoat), the crusader consoled himself by finding that it was but seven of the night, and that he would reach Godesberg ere the warder had sounded the second gong.

    A Legend of the Rhine 2006

  • ‘The hour is close at hand, then,’ said the master, consulting a horologe as large and as round as a full-grown orange.

    The Purcell Papers 2003

  • That salute fired at the British flag the other day at Yorktown [cheers] was a stroke of the hammer on the horologe of time, which marks the coming of a new era, when national animosities shall be forgotten, and only national sympathies and good-will shall remain.

    Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z Various

  • Hanging around the throne of sapphire and gold, a rich garland awaits the coming of him who died for his country, and when the horologe of time has struck its last note upon his dying brow, Justice hands the record of life to Mercy, and Mercy pleads with Jesus, and God, for his sake, receives him in his eternal home beyond the skies at last and forever.

    "Co. Aytch" Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment or, A Side Show of the Big Show Sam R. Watkins

  • Thomas Carlyle said, "It costs too much to have a revolution strike on the horologe of time to tell the world what o'clock it is"; and so it was important that destructive movements should be held in check.

    Policing the Plains Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police R.G. MacBeth

  • -- A SOUL is not, like wind, (_spiritus_ or breath,) contained within a capsule; the ALMIGHTY MAKER is not like a clockmaker that once, in old immemorial ages, having _made_ his horologe of a universe, sits ever since and sees it go!

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843 Various

  • Do you hear the ticking of the horologe of time with each pulsation of your heart?

    The French Immortals Series — Complete Various

  • At high noon the twelve apostles come out from the famous horologe and take up their march, and chanticleer, on one of the summits of the clock-case, opens his brazen throat and crows loud enough to fill the farthest recesses of the church with his harsh alarum.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 12, No. 31, October, 1873 Various

  • Malachite tables of every conceivable shape from the Ural; carpets to whose texture the shawls of Cashmere had become tributary; paintings by all the known, and many of the unknown, old masters; these were only rivaled by chairs of the most undeniable and gorgeous curled maple; and a beaufet of true cherry acknowledged, in common with a Jerome horologe, a Connecticut origin.

    The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862 Devoted To Literature And National Policy Various

Comments

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  • A while back I went to a horologist to put new batteries in my wrist watches. He looked like a stereotypical watchmaker -- eyes squinting behind horn rimmed glasses sitting on the tip of his nose. I thought it was quite amusing that he can tell people he's a horologist...betting that some people would have raised eyebrows wondering what he was telling them! " You're a hor-what?"

    July 23, 2008

  • "1. A piece of mechanism for indicating the hours of the day; a clock; a timepiece of any kind.

        I, whom thou seest with horyloge in hande,

        Am named tyme.

    Sir T. More, Pageant, Int. to Utopia (trans.), p. lxvili.

        Repeated smoke-clouds, whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery.

    Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, p. 129.

        On the left stands the slender octagon tower of the horologe. Longfellow, Hyperion, i. 6.

    2. One who tells the hour; a servant formerly employed to call out or announce the hours.

        The kok that orloge is of thorpis lyte.

    Chaucer, Parliament of Fowls . . . ."

    - Century Dictionary

    August 20, 2010

  • The crow of the cock was more cheery

    Or the bell tolling bedtime when weary.

    A lovely hodgepodge

    We’ve called horologe

    Gives way to Alexa and Siri.

    December 31, 2018