Mar13

widdershins.

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Widdershins

Merriam Webster Dictionary

wid·​der·​shinsˈ- wi-dər-shənz 

ever have those days?

English speakers today are most likely to encounter widdershins as a synonym of counterclockwise. But in earliest known uses, found in texts from the early 1500s, widdershins was used more broadly in the sense of “in the wrong way or opposite direction.” To say that one’s hair “stood widdershins” was, in essence, to say that one was having a bad hair day. By the mid-1500s, English speakers had adopted widdershins to specifically describe movement opposite to the apparent clockwise direction (as seen from the northern hemisphere) of the sun traveling across the sky, which, at the time, could be considered evil or unlucky. The word originates from the Old High German widar, meaning “back” or “against,” and sinnen, meaning “to travel.”

First Known Use, 1545 – Time Traveler.
Art credit – Babushka Cat

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56 responses »

  1. It’s fascinating how vocabulary seems to be so much more sophisticated in the past and the complexity is whittled down over time. Definitely an I Need More Coffee morning over here!

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  2. this is an unknown word to me. But I have an excellent exemple to describe it: One lunch time, a VERY long time ago, my father laddled sugar in the wooden teaglass holders on the table…. when we girls laughed (lunch was then eaten mostly in silence so that daddy could listen to the news on the radio), he turned red, mumbled something and then turned around to fetch the teapot – pouring tea in the empty wooden holders……. a truly widdershins moment for him.
    many years later I calculated back to that moment and it was (must have been!) that our mum told him to be pregnant with their 4th child! She was already not completely young any longer and her 3rd kid was 5yrs old when she was giving birth to our one and only brother!!!

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    • yes! the funniest was when one of my dear friends enlisted the help of her husband to track down her glasses, knowing they were somewhere in the house. after quite a long time and effort made, he husband found them on her face, where she’d been wearing them the entire time! they had been married for so long and they were both so used to seeing her with them on that they just had learned to see them as a part of her face over time. )

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  20. just discovered there’s a 2011 collection of supernatural stories called ‘Widdershins’ by an English writer with the unlikely name of Oliver Onions. Good Reads gave it 4/5. Will try to get it through the library —

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