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By the end of Chapter 5 of The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, there is a usage that I have never seen before: "under the ten minutes".

The context:

Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes.

Is "under the ten minutes" exactly the same as "under ten minutes"? Or do they have different shades of meanings?

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3
  • 1
    It's tempting to interpret this Google 4-gram (for "under the ten minutes") merely as a popularity marker for the Holmes books. But 'just under the hour' seems to have been in fairly unpredictable use over the decades.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 10, 2022 at 14:39
  • 2
    Context needed. Was 10 minutes previously established as a deadline?
    – Hot Licks
    Commented May 10, 2022 at 12:21
  • This post was created over a year ago. They probably don't care anymore...
    – Kimbi
    Commented Feb 7, 2023 at 7:39

1 Answer 1

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It's just a way to emphasize that it took no more than ten minutes. Conceptually "ten minutes" is being used as a single unit, except there is no distinct name for ten minutes like there is for 15 minutes - the quarter or 60 minutes - the hour, so he's using "the ten minutes".

He's saying that they got there pretty fast - he feels/states that he rode there in under 10 minutes.

There are similar expressions in modern English including:

  • You're fired! I want you to clear out your desk within the hour.
  • The train will arrive within the the next quarter-hour.
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  • "the ten minutes" sounds pretty archaic if you ask me.
    – Ярослав Рахматуллин
    Commented Nov 11, 2021 at 3:56
  • Are you surmising or have you heard this expression? Doyle wrote this 120 years ago. I wonder if this kind of talk is still around in the UK; it's unheard of in the US.
    – cruthers
    Commented Nov 13, 2021 at 2:02
  • You're right, I'm guessing. I haven't heard it in daily speech, movies, tv-shows or read it. But, of course I don't speak to everyone so some people may still use it. There's nothing wrong with the expression, but it's not very common. At least in my opinion. So "archaic" is perhaps a bit much given that it's only a 120 years old.
    – Ярослав Рахматуллин
    Commented Nov 13, 2021 at 21:33
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    It seems to me that the cab driver is emphasising the speed and meant "under the ten minutes that it usually takes to travel that distance"
    – Greybeard
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 16:55
  • Also ' ... in just under the hour' uses the 'familiar' conceptualising of the good old hour unit.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 10, 2022 at 14:44

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