I Did Not Make It Up.

Clepsydra (literally “water thief”)
is the ancient Greek word for water clock.

“Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place,
for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons,
the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and
the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.”

– From John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat (1935)