Eleventh hour_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Eleventh hour

In olden times, people worked only during daytime from dawn to dusk, or roughly speaking during the twelve hours from six o’clock in the morn to six o’clock in the afternoon. Literally, those who come in to work at the eleventh hour arrive at 5pm, which is pretty late, obviously. In the Bible story, some laborers came in at the eleventh hour but received a full day’s pay, the same as those who came in at day break and had to “borne the burden and heat of the day.”

Anyways, I have more than once encouraged readers to read the Bible. I’ve done that not because I believe that the Christian God created man (I believe the contrary, in fact, that men created God) or anything like that. I encourage Chinese learners to read the Bible just as I encourage them to read Greek mythology and roman history. And the reason is simple: Got to read these to really understand the Western psych. Language-wise, there are so many widely used idioms and sayings that come straight from the Bible that it simply doesn’t make sense not reading it. Similarly, a Westerner studying Chinese can hardly succeed big time without reading the likes of Lao Tsu and Confucius.

Alright, back to “the eleventh hour”. If you do something – usually involving a difficult decision to make – at the eleventh hour, you do it at the last moment, when you absolutely have to. In other words, it’s the very last minute before the deadline.