hourglass
/ˈaʊəɡlɑːs
/noun
1A timing device with two connected glass bulbs containing sand that takes an hour to pass from the upper to the lower bulb.The invention of timekeeping devices - hourglasses, water clocks, graduated tapers - made it possible for early civilized people to begin to control and standardize the units of time, and in doing so to coordinate their lives....
- When you run out of paper or the words you write are jumbled up, think of the hourglass passing sand from the top to the bottom.
- The last sands of the hourglass passed through and it turned over, beginning again.
1.1 [as modifier] Shaped like an hourglass: her hourglass figure...
- Often these ideals take the form of ridiculously unfeasible forms with unhealthily exaggerated hourglass figures.
- Even the dolls that girls play with are thin and have hourglass figures.
- She's still a girl, but she's got that hourglass figure, and she really enhances it.