O-dark-thirty Edit Meaning

1.

Military time designating an unspecified time after midnight but before sunrise. Normally used in reference to either the time one goes to sleep, wakes up, or has to be on-the-job. Usually quite a while before sunrise, i.e.: well before 0500 hours ( 5AM for you civilians )

The name is a play on the way 24-hour time is handled in the Military. Times are pronounced as numbers and written without colons, i.e.: 4:30PM is 1630H or "sixteen-thirty hours". Times between midnight and noon such as 4:00AM are written as 0400 and have the leading zero called out as "zero" or the letter "O", as in "o-four-hundred".

Example: We had to get up at o-dark-thirty to get the job done this morning.

See o'dark hundred, o dark thirty, early, late, early bird