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

A 48-46 defeat, settled by a France penalty with the clock in the red, only adds to the riddle.

From BBC • Mar. 14, 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

In one instance, he exploited a loophole in the rulebook that allowed the Titans to eat up nearly two minutes of clock in the fourth quarter without running any plays, simply by committing presnap penalties.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 2, 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

There’s no clock in the room, so I can’t count down the minutes until the interrogation.

From "Insurgent" by Veronica Roth

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.