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When telling time and 30 minutes has gone past an hour, we say “half past”. For instance, half past 4 or half past 5.

Why can’t we also say “half to”. For instance, half to 5 or half to 6?

Shouldn’t it be a matter of preference, as it is when a glass is said to be half empty or half full?

MetaEd
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Henrique Ordine
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  • Especially when we could very well say quarter to as much as quarter past. – Kris Oct 22 '12 at 08:37
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    Some expressions are idiomatic and some aren't. In American English, at least, half past is the standard idiom and saying half to would mark you as a poor student of English. OTOH, you can always say whatever you like if you're willing to take the consequences. (segue hyperbolique:) If your language is strange enough, you'll end up in jail or a mental institution, especially if you say whatever you like at an American airport and some zealous narc overhears and decides that you may be a security risk. –  Oct 22 '12 at 08:39
  • We never say "three quarters to" either, although "three quarters past" is perfectly acceptable. You will just have to accept that English is asymmetrical in this aspect. – Peter Shor Oct 22 '12 at 13:07
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    @PeterShor I've never heard 'three quarters past' and it sounds very strange to me. A quick Google search of it throws up few credible results. – Ina Oct 22 '12 at 13:13
  • Never heard of three-quarters past either... – Rory Alsop Oct 22 '12 at 13:14
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    True. But people used to say it. I must have seen it in some old book. – Peter Shor Oct 22 '12 at 13:15
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    alternatively, 6:-30 – picakhu Oct 22 '12 at 14:17
  • @BillFranke whoa ... that's crazy talk, but the sad thing is you might actually be right. – McGarnagle Oct 22 '12 at 15:05
  • @Bill Franke: The meeting will start at half seven sounds perfectly okay to me. You don't necessarily need to use the word "past" at all. – FumbleFingers Oct 22 '12 at 15:06
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    @FumbleFingers, it does sound awkward (to me), but possibly only because I have never heard it used that way (or I pretended I didn't hear it when I did). – picakhu Oct 22 '12 at 15:13
  • @picakhu: Discarding the word "past" is far more a spoken than a written thing, but if I search Google Books for just at half seven I get thousands of hits, not just a handful. They're almost all for the current context, and there will be plenty more for "before half ten", and all the other variants. Common as muck, I'd say. – FumbleFingers Oct 22 '12 at 15:21
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    @FumbleFingers: Could be a British England thing; start at half seven sound like it's missing a word to my American ear. – J.R. Oct 23 '12 at 13:57
  • Same here, ommitting "past" there doesn't make any sense to me, definitely not idiomatic. AmE speaker. – Ben Lee Nov 01 '12 at 22:42
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    @FumbleFingers - To my American-English-raised, Hungarian-influenced ear, "half seven" ought to be 6:30 (because that's what it is if you translate it word-for-word to Hungarian). In any case, American English simply does not use "half seven": it sounds nonsensical and ungrammatical. – Marthaª Sep 01 '15 at 21:08
  • FWIW, in my (US) experience, the most idiomatic ways of saying 7:45 are “quarter of eight” and “quarter ’til eight”. I guess I would understand “quarter to eight”, but I wouldn’t say it.   P.S. I would not understand “half seven”. – Scott - Слава Україні Sep 25 '18 at 04:18
  • Its easy to keep track of. Just remember that "Half Dozen" is six, so obviously the time of "half twelve" means "a half hour after noon". Unless it is at night, of course. I don't know why foreign students think English is complicated! (is this a good time to mention that to me (dutch) "half twaalf" is 11:30?) – PcMan Apr 04 '21 at 09:39

5 Answers5

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If you make it a matter of personal preference you will defeat one of the purposes of language, which is to make your meaning clear to your listeners or readers. If no one else says half to, you may find that you will be asked to repeat what you have said in some other way. There is also a more direct risk of confusion. In British English, at least, half followed by an hour is used by some to mean half past [hour].

It's perhaps worth adding that in German, by contrast, half followed by an hour does mean 30 minutes before the hour named. Halb eins is not 'half past one', but 'half past twelve'. So there's no cognitive reason why time can't be expressed in this way.

Barrie England
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The convention is that we express the time in terms of the hour that it's closest to. "A quarter past nine", not "three-quarters to ten"; but "twenty to ten", not "forty past nine".

"Half past" is, of course, exactly in the middle. The convention is that we say "half past" rather than "half to".

Sure, there would be nothing technically inaccurate about saying "half to". But as Barrie notes, the purpose of language is to convey meaning. If you don't follow standard conventions, it is more difficult for others to understand what you mean. I wouldn't say that you should never break the conventions. But I would say that you should only break the conventions when you have a specific reason to do so, like when you are trying to emphasize something or make a specific point.

Marthaª
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Jay
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    I don't completely agree that that's the convention. Half to ten might cause me to arch an eyebrow or "alert security," but I don't think forty past ten would get the same "that's odd" reaction. If I was giving the time over the radio, I think "31 minutes past the hour" wouldn't be markedly less acceptable than "29 minutes before the hour." Here's another example. – J.R. Oct 23 '12 at 09:53
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    @J.R. Of course if you said "the time is ten forty-two" that would be perfectly normal -- we'd normally write that "the time is 10:42". Given that, I suppose I'd be much less taken aback to hear "forty past ten" then "forty to ten". I'd also be less surprised to hear "forty-five past ten" then "three-quarters past ten". – Jay Oct 23 '12 at 13:40
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    Do you have any evidence to support your assertion? Personal opinion is not usually good evidence on its own. – NeilB Nov 14 '19 at 08:55
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    @NeilB It's not my opinion, it's my experience as someone who has been hearing English spoken for 60 years. But if you want a citation that my experience is not unusual, here's a web page that doesn't state it the same way I did, but expresses the same idea: https://englishstudypage.com/grammar/telling-the-time-in-english/ Oh, and here's one that says it pretty much the same way I said it (not the exact same words, of course): https://www.myenglishlanguage.com/essential-vocabulary/telling-time-english/ – Jay Nov 14 '19 at 14:37
  • I think you'll find its 'than' rather than 'then'... – NeilB Nov 15 '19 at 17:04
  • @NeilB RE "then" vs "than": True. My humble apologies. – Jay Nov 15 '19 at 22:08
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For all other times on the clock, there are unique identifiers eg quarter past, twenty-five past, twenty-five to, etc.

For half-past you could say half-to, but what would be the point? It means the same, and current accepted usage is half-past, so you might as well use that rather than use odd speech.

Rory Alsop
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I think it is a contraction, in the same way o'clock is.

When I learnt to tell the time, many years ago - Ponitous was still having flying lessons at the time... I was taught:

"One o'clock, Two o'clock to define the hour, when the long hand is on '12'. It was explained that "o'clock" means: The time "of the clock" or as indicated by the clock.

Therefore, one of the clock simply means one hour indicated by, or of the clock's passage in time.

In the same way, "Half past" the hour is an abbreviation of the 18th or 19th century UK English idiom: "half of the hour past", that is you are half way through the last full hour of the clock, [as indicated by the clock]. Its worth remembering that, at this time [no pun intended], clocks and watches in general use were still relatively 'new technology'.

With time and use, "half of the hour past" was gradually shortened to become simply "half past...".

I seem to remember that in German, they refer to, for example, half past three [drei], as:

"halb vier" (half before four)

This may explain why I'm always late for appointments in Germany!

I am not certain of the reason for this fundamental difference, other than:

  1. German logical thinking
  2. The German sentence construction is significantly different to that used in English

"Half of the hour past" is used here also:

The Holy Thief

Pengarron Land

NeilB
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    Peters isn't guaranteed to reproduce earlier usages faithfully. And in any case, one would need to examine the equivalent usage for say a quarter to five, and probably ask why 'half of the hour past' didn't model on say 'a quarter of the hour to' instead (so the question still isn't addressed). – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '19 at 09:14
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For the reason that anything that is half to is really half past the hour just preceding.

It's probably considered better to state with reference to the past hour than the future hour in this case.

This is just my conjecture, though.

Kris
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