machine-hour

noun

The amount of work that can be done by one machine in one hour; a billable hour for one machine. (Said of, for example, a piece of heavy equipment or a machine tool.)

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Meanings

nounmachine-hour (plural machine-hours)

plural machine-hours

  1. The amount of work that can be done by one machine in one hour; a billable hour for one machine. (Said of, for example, a piece of heavy equipment or a machine tool.)

    With the right carbide tooling and toolpath programming, you're not looking at too many machine-hours for a job like this. If you're going to putz around with cheaper tooling and guesstimated feedrates, then you'll pay for those in more machine-hours.

Origin

Compound of machine + hour, although, as with any such unit of measure (e.g., ton-miles, newton metres), the mathematical relationship of multiplication is simultaneously involved: X machines working during Y hours = X × Y = Z machine-hours.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

machine-hour. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/machine-hour

MLA

“machine-hour.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/machine-hour. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “machine-hour,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/machine-hour.

Source: machine-hour on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.