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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.

Celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and Taylor Swift make up a handful of the self-made women billionaires, though they tend to clock in on the lower end of the billionaire scale.

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 21, 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

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

That might sound like a fatal problem, since the clock in Comey’s case expired just after Halligan filed her defective indictment.

From Slate • Nov. 24, 2025

She stood at the foot of the stairs and called them, but there was no answering patter of running feet, only the steady tick-tock of the old clock in the hallway.

From "The Incredible Journey" by Sheila Burnford

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.