student asking question

What does “on the clock” mean?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

In this video, "on the clock" means that Rachel and Monica have 30 seconds left to answer Ross's questions. You will hear this phrase quite a bit in game shows where a person has to answer a question in a certain amount of time, such as Jeopardy. "On the clock" can also mean to be working at your job. When you are "on the clock" it means you are supposed to be focused on your job and not on everyday life stuff or you aren't supposed to be on your phone texting. These are both fairly common phrases. If you just pay attention to the sentence, you will be fine figuring out which definition is correct.

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