At the Eleventh Hour

The phrase comes from the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in the Gospel of Matthew (20:1-16). A landowner hires labourers throughout the day, at the first hour, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and finally the eleventh, the last hour of the working day in the Roman reckoning of time, which ran from sunrise to sunset. At day's end he pays every worker the same wage regardless of when they started, to the outrage of those hired first. The parable is about grace being available even to latecomers, but the specific detail of the eleventh-hour labourers is what stuck in everyday English as shorthand for the very last possible moment.