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I just heard Winnie-the-Pooh claim that his clock (which doesn't seem to function at all) is "sixteen o'clock".

I assume that this was meant as a joke by the silly old bear.

However, they do have a 24-hour-format in England, where the series is set, so it made me wonder if they do say things like that there.

What I'm asking is if they continue after "12 o'clock" and go "13 o'clock" and so on or if they say "1 PM" or whatever 13:00 is in the perpetually confusing 12-hour clock format?

Saksham Weckwerth
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    Does this answer your question? How should one say times aloud in 24-hour notation? – Mari-Lou A May 17 '20 at 06:45
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    The 24 hour clock is used in Britain for things like railway timetables, and on digital clocks, but not in ordinary conversation. Anyway, the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories were written nearly a century ago, so I'm sure it's a joke. – Kate Bunting May 17 '20 at 08:14
  • @KateBunting You are absolutely right. In the 1950s when I was at school, the twenty-four hour clock was as foreign to us as it is in America today (or perhaps more so). I can remember first hearing about it from my French teacher, who explained that we might encounter it in France. It seemed very odd. However in the last half-century or so Britain has partially adopted it, in the same way that we have adopted the metric system (for some things but not others) and degrees centigrade (or Celsius). (I now find it quite difficult to think in Fahrenheit - though it is what I was brought up with.) – WS2 May 17 '20 at 08:33
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    Indeed George Orwell lampoons it in 1984 (published 1948), which begins It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen. – WS2 May 17 '20 at 08:41

2 Answers2

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"O'clock" is used only for the numbers between 1 and 12, am or pm.

13:00 is said, "13 hundred."

Mary
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"Winnie-the-Pooh" was written by AA Milne in 1926. At that time the United Kingdom (of which England is a part) used the 12-hour conventions for discussing time for everyday purposes. It still does, mostly. A person reading a railway timetable might see a train at '16.00', but they will usually say 'the train leaves at four o'clock in the afternoon' (or 'four PM'). As Mary says, 'o'clock' is only used with times in the 12-hour system. In 1926, as now, 'sixteen o'clock' would have been a nonsense time. The ordinary reader would not have thought of the 24-hour clock, whose widespread use came much later (the 1970s perhaps).

Michael Harvey
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