[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]

 

The adverb o’clock is colloquially and humorously used with modifying words—as in expressions such as stupid o’clock, which denote an unreasonably, excessively or inconveniently early or late hour.

This adverb is also used with nouns such as beer to suggest a time at which it is considered acceptable or sociable to start drinking the type of alcohol specified.

In particular, the expression beer o’clock has often been used since 1986 to denote 5 p.m. as the end of the working day.

However, this expression has also been used of various times of the day.

These are, in chronological order, some of the early occurrences of that latter use of the expression beer o’clock that I have found:

1-: From an account of the annual picnic of the Improved B. P. O. E. (i.e., the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, an African-American fraternal order) that was held on Tuesday 5^th July 1910 at Shell Mound Park, in Emeryville, California—account published in the San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, California, USA) of Wednesday 6^th July 1910 [page 4, column 6]—this text also contains the expressions claret and Riesling o’clock, and champagne o’clock:

Attendants at the beer garden stated that the black race, as represented yesterday, is better behaved on a picnic than a Caucasian in a similar situation. One burly negro seated next to a golden-skinned beauty whose black, drooping chrysanthemum of hair was full of silver and look-like diamonds, whacked the table with his hand, and a white man appeared. “I earnestly request that you let us have something for the thirst,” said the black. “What’s that sign? Claret, 50 cents; Riesling, 75 cents? Why, good heavens, I promised myself that I wouldn’t drink beer and wouldn’t drink claret after 9 o’clock. This is the time when champagne begins. I’ve been here ever since beer o’clock, and I danced through claret and Riesling o’clock, and now it’s champagne o’clock.”

2-: From an advertisement for the Whitehouse Discotheque, Strand Street, Whitehaven, published in The Whitehaven News (Whitehaven, Cumberland, England) of Thursday 24^th February 1983 [page 18, column 1]:

Saturday, 26^th January
[…] It’s Saturday, it’s gone eight o’clock (or beer o’clock) so were are you—here hopefully—See ya!

3-: From the caption to the following photograph, illustrating an account of the 40^th annual Murrieta Volunteer Fire Department’s Old Fashioned Pit Bar-B-Q that was held at Murrieta, California, on Sunday 12^th April 1987—account by Polly J. Filanc, published in The Californian and The Valley Press (Temecula, California, USA) of Thursday 16^th April 1987 [page A-12, column 1]:

BEER O’CLOCK—Barbecuers take time out to quench beer buds with a tall, cold one, sold at a stand across the street from the fire department.

4-: From an account of the 5^th annual Martinez Fourth of July Softball Tournament, by William Ayres, published in the Martinez News-Gazette (Martinez, California, USA) of Friday 10^th July 1987 [page 6, column 2]—here, beer o’clock is the name of a team:

Eight a.m. seemed too early to begin a holiday celebration, but Ken Perry’s “It’s Beer O’Clock” and Sandy Keller’s “Valco Drug” team didn’t seem to care. Both sides came out swinging and an hour later saw the Valco team emerge victorious.