I had to wake up before 3 am this morning (on a Sunday!), and I had to worry about the start of daylight saving time. (It always starts on the last Sunday of March in Europe. Other areas have other conventions.) This left me wondering, among other things, about expressing times when DST ends.
When the last Sunday of October comes and clocks are turned back one hour at 4 am in Finland, how can I refer to the times from 3 to 4 am that occur twice? It would be great if there is a canonical expression, but I am open to any suggestions.
I have two ideas for distinguishing the two instances of 4 am:
- hora quarta and hora bis quarta (by analogy to the second instance of a day on leap years marked by bis)
- hora quarta temporis aestivi/hiemalis
The second one is unambiguous but feels a bit heavy. The first one sounds more idiomatic to me, but the plain hora quarta is ambiguous. Perhaps one could contrast the bis with a semel? How would you make the distinction in Latin and why?
I am using the modern convention where horae are counted from midnight and noon, not the Roman one. Whichever convention you prefer, the question remains: how to remove ambiguity?
I should add that although I ask only about Latin, I don't know a canonical pair of distinctive expressions in any language.