godzinom

Godzinom is the dative plural form of the Polish noun godzina, meaning "hour." In Polish, nouns decline for case and number, so godzina has the plural forms: nominative godziny, genitive godzin, dative godzinom, instrumental godzinami, and locative godzinach. The form shown here, godzinom, indicates the indirect object or beneficiary role in a sentence.

In general usage, the dative plural is used for indirect objects and beneficiaries of an action. However, the dative plural godzonom is relatively uncommon in everyday Polish. For expressing durations or quantities of time, Polish typically relies on the genitive plural godzin (for example, przez kilka godzin; five or more hours would be expressed with godzin, not with the dative). As a result, godzinom tends to appear mainly in more formal, literary, or instructional contexts, or in very specific syntactic constructions where hours are the recipient or beneficiary of an action.

Etymology-wise, godzina derives from historical forms of the time unit in Slavic languages. The dative plural ending -om is a standard marker of the plural dative case in Polish for masculine and neuter nouns of certain declensions, including godzina.

See also: Polish noun declension, godzina (hour), Polish cases.