What time is a quarter to 9?
A quarter is 1/4 of a number. There are 60 minutes in an hour and 15 is one quarter or 1/4th of 60. So a quarter past 4 means it is 4:15, either am or pm depending on the time of day!
The reason quarter till is used, is because the hour has 1/4 of the minutes left before completion. Since an hour is 60 minutes, a quarter of an hour is 15 minutes. Therefore, quarter after 8, for example, is 8:15 and quarter till 9 would be 8:45.
It means 15 minutes ( one quarter or one fourth of an hour ) before 2 o’clock — where two o’clock can be 0200h or 1400h.
When the time is ‘quarter past’, it is 15 minutes past the hour. The long. hand (minute hand) points to the 3. The short hand (hour hand) points. just past the hour.
What is quarter past the hour?
Like it’s been explained in Erin’s answer, an hour is divided by 4 periods of 15 minutes. It is called a quarter because 15 minutes is 1/4th of 60 minutes. So it is a quarter of an hour. This is also visibly seen on a clock face.
What does ”a quarter of 10” mean to you? A friend asked me this question recently and I thought the answer was obvious: It means 15 minutes before 10 o’clock. But there are apparently many people who find this construction confusing or have never heard of it.
What time is quarter to 10?
What is the meaning of 10 past 10?
As a non-native speaker, I consider a quarter past nine (9:15) and a quarter to nine (8:45) easy to understand.
