Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

machine-hour

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.72 in modern English

Syllables: ma-chine-hour
IPA

21

Scrabble Score

11

Letters

3

Syllables

10

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The amount of work that can be done by one machine in one hour; a billable hour for one machine. (Said of, for example, a piece of heavy equipment or a machine tool.)

Example Sentences

"With the right carbide tooling and toolpath programming, you're not looking at too many machine-hours for a job like this. If you're going to putz around with cheaper tooling and guesstimated feedrates, then you'll pay for those in more machine-hours."

Etymology

Compound of machine + hour, although, as with any such unit of measure (e.g., ton-miles, newton metres), the mathematical relationship of multiplication is simultaneously involved: X machines working during Y hours = X × Y = Z machine-hours.

Inflected Forms

machine-hours (plural)

Frequently Paired Words

person-hour man-hour

Questions

What does machine-hour mean?: The amount of work that can be done by one machine in one hour; a billable hour for one machine. (Said of, for example, a piece of heavy equipment or a machine tool.)
Where does machine-hour come from?: Compound of machine + hour, although, as with any such unit of measure (e.g., ton-miles, newton metres), the mathematical relationship of multiplication is simultaneously involved: X machines working during Y hours = X × Y = Z machine-hours.

How to pronounce machine-hour

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “machine-hour”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
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Repeat and practice — Say “machine-hour” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.