Is 24/7 a common idiom throughout the world?
Is 24/7 a common idiom throughout the world?
Normally idioms are language specific, but number of hours and days are the same.
I have actually never heard anyone say it this way specifically where I grew up... so technically the answer is "no"?
I tried to dug around and found a Reddit post saying this:
"The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the term as "twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; constantly". It lists its first reference to 24/7 to be from a 1983 story in the US magazine Sports Illustrated in which Louisiana State University player Jerry Reynolds describes his jump shot in just such a way: 24-7-365."
So this might be a fairly new idiom? Which would explain why it's not really a thing in a lot of cultures... but I assume they have their ways of referring to this.
number of hours and days are the same
Ok akktually Japan has a rather interesting 30-hour day thing in the context of businesses... but jokes aside, the 24-hour, 7-day week system is indeed quite universal
Where did you grow up?
East Asia; again, never heard anyone refer to "24/7" specifically (ok maybe at more hipster places that try to imitate American businesses?)... There might be a similar idiom for it but I genuinely couldn't think of any off the top of my head
Number of days in a week (or the existence of weeks at all) aren't universal, though. And technically not even hours.
Only the length of the day, year and moon cycle are universal (or earthiversal).
Your first point is technically correct, but 24-hour days and 7-day weeks are a de facto global standard at this point in history. There are outliers, like the Javanese 5-day week or the experimental 5-day Soviet calendar, but they are few and far between.
Hum... I think the week is more widely adopted than the solar year.
But neither is universal. AFAIK, the length of the day is.
In Polish we use "24 godziny na dobę" which means 24 hours per day
"Éjjel-nappal, a hét minden napján!"
No, I guess 24/7 is not ubiquitous.