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Showing results for clock in. Search instead for clock+dial.
Synonyms

clock in

Idioms  

  1. Begin work, as in She clocked in late again. Also, clock out, end work, as in Please wait for me; I forgot to clock out. The allusion here is to punching a time clock, a device that punches the time on a card to record when an employee arrives and departs. [Late 1800s]

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and Taylor Swift make up a handful of the self-made women billionaires, though they tend to clock in on the lower end of the billionaire scale.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 21, 2026

Most of them clock in at around 35 minutes, although the latest season premiere runs just over an hour.

From Salon • Feb. 7, 2026

He earned his PhD in 2006 from the Graduate School of Science at Nagoya University, where he studied the circadian clock in cyanobacteria.

From Science Daily • Jan. 13, 2026

Run out the clock in the million ways that we have learned that the clock can be run out.

From Slate • Dec. 26, 2025

“The tides today will be low at eleven o’ clock in the evening.

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.