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Ana poland Posted 13 years ago
Vocabulary

second meaning another?

Hi,

here's a quote from a tv series. The guy talks about the time and the hands of the clock:

The big hand says Fu*k, and the little hand says Off..... Good thing there's not a second hand

How come he says that there is no second hand when clearly there are two hands on the clock which by the way he had just pointed out. Is 'second' sometimes used to mean 'another'?
  

Top answer

Clocks have a hand that shows the hours , and another hand that shows the minutes . Some clocks also have a third hand, that shows the seconds. Clive

— Clive

  • Clocks have a hand that shows the hours , and another hand that shows the minutes .
  • Some clocks also have a third hand, that shows the seconds.
  • Clive
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4 Answers
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Clocks have a hand that shows the hours, and another hand that shows the minutes. Some clocks also have a third hand, that shows the seconds.

Clive
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Thanks but I wasn't really asking about how many hands a clock has. What I meant is why was the word 'second' used to refer to to an object (in this case a missing object) that is the last one of of three not two. An an English learner I would say

Good thing there's not ANOTHER hand

Seeing as the 'big hand' could be substituted by 'first hand' and the 'little hand' by 'sec
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I've already explained that the hand that shows the seconds is commonly called 'the second hand.'

We do not naturally refer to the minutes hand as the second hand, or to the hours hand as the first hand.

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I get it now. I kept thinking of the 'second' as an ordinal number and it didn't make any sense. Thank you:)
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