half-an-hour
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Senses: examples: text: [S]ome very languid remarks on the probable brilliancy of the ball were all that broke, at intervals, a silence of half-an-hour, before they were joined by the master of the house.
ref: c. 1803–1805, Jane Austen, “The Watsons”, in J[ames] E[dward] Austen[-]Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen: […] to which is Added Lady Susan and Fragments of Two Other Unfinished Tales by Miss Austen, 2nd edition, London: Richard Bentley and Son, […], published 1871, →OCLC, pages 308–309:
text: Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things." / "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!"
ref: 1871 December 27 (indicated as 1872), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “Wool and Water”, in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 100:
text: In about half-an-hour John and Mr. York, who was to be our new coachman, came in to see us.
ref: [1877], Anna Sewell, “Earlshall”, in Black Beauty: […], London: Jarrold and Sons, […], →OCLC, part II, pages 101–102:
text: "The dogs were no sooner let loose, than the hare was afoot. This time there was no stopping or casting, but the hounds were soon in full cry, and after half-an-hour's run, the hare came dancing down the moor towards me."
ref: 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 77:
text: Fortunately the fever attacked me in the district town at the inn; I sent for the doctor. In half-an-hour the district doctor appeared, a thin, dark-haired man of middle height. He prescribed me the usual sudorific, ordered a mustard-plaster to be put on, very deftly slid a five-rouble note up his sleeve, coughing drily and looking away as he did so, and then was getting up to go home, but somehow fell into talk and remained.
ref: 1895, Ivan Turgenev, “The District Doctor”, in Constance Garnett, transl., A Sportsman’s Sketches [...] Translated from the Russian (The Novels of Ivan Turgenev; VIII), volume I, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 56:
text: For half-an-hour we were muffled in a cold, damp mist, and total darkness, and had begun to think of going indoors when, all at once, the car burst into the pure and starlit region of the upper air.
ref: 1897, John Munro, chapter VI, in A Trip to Venus:
text: As an old and accustomed traveller, as fond of speedy travel as anyone, and not myself, at times, above pottering away an extra half-an-hour in town and making up time en route, my firm impression is that the necessity, the importance of this ultraexcessive rapidity of travel is a mistake, which is becoming one of increasing gravity.
ref: 1906, The World's Paper Trade Review, Volume 46, Stonhill & Gillis, page 12:
text: It may be only half-an-hour after a solid mid-day lunch, but the question will be put nevertheless, and your obliging steward, if you cannot make up your mind what you will have, will very likely leave you for a moment only to hurry back with a tray bearing a large assortment of samples of the delikatessen beloved of the Fatherland.
ref: 1913, R. A. Fletcher, Travelling Palaces: Luxury in Passenger Steamships, London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., […], page 296:
text: ["]Ghosh Babu, how long time they get for elevenses?" / "About half-an-hour," replied Ghosh with authority.
ref: 1989, Khushwant Singh, “Man, How the Government of India Run!”, in The Collected Short Stories of Khushwant Singh, New Delhi: Ravi Dayal Publisher, →ISBN, page 96, column 3; republished as “Book Extract: They also Serve …”, in Sunday, volume 18, number 4, Calcutta: Ananda Bazar Patrika, 2 January – 2 February 1991, →OCLC, page 75:
text: At 12.30 in the afternoon – half-an-hour earlier and she could have been accused of perpetrating an April Fool’s swansong deception – Hughes stood up in the Commons, doughnutted by as ugly a bunch of sad or scowling Blair babes as you could gather.
ref: 2004, Steve Moxon, “Storyline: Bev Gets Knotted”, in The Great Immigration Scandal, Imprint Academic, →ISBN, page 195:
glosses: Alternative form of half an hour.