antedating of "clock wise" (1882)

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Sun, 10 Jul 2005 22:36:12 -0400
Laurence Horn _laurence.horn at YALE.EDU_ (mailto:laurence.horn at YALE.EDU)
writes:


>One question that I've always wondered about is whether  the
>referential meanings of "deasil" and "clockwise" (and similarly  those
>of "widdershins" and "counter-clockwise") converge only in  the
>Northern Hemisphere, given the difference in the apparent course  of
>the sun down under.  Any 17th century antipodeans around to  offer
>informant judgments?



Clocks, with hands and dials, go back to the MIddle Ages and were  moderately
common in Europe before the post-Columbian expansion brought speakers  of
European languages to areas south of the Equator.  The convention that  the hands
of clocks moved in the same direction as the sun's shadow does on a  Northern
Hemisphere sundial (that is, the direction we now call "clockwise") was
therefore so well-established by the 1490's that clocks made in the Southern
Hemisphere, or made in the Northern Hemisphere for export to the Southern, had
the hands move clockwise.

Hence the terms "clockwise" and "counterclockwise", although perhaps
invented as late as 1882, refer to the convention that clocks behave the way
Northern Hemisphere sundials do.

As for "deasil" and "widdershins", these terms are not, apparently, tied to
the movements of clock hands.  However, the sheer conservatism of language
(once a term acquires a meaning, it only acquires a contrary  meaning as a
result of ironic usage, usually in political contexts----I  suppose someone
sometime has proposed this as a law of philology) means that  neither word would
acquire a reverse meaning in the Southern Hemisphere unless  there were unusual
political circumstances involved, which there weren't.   Anyone accustomed to
using "widdershins" or "deasil", be s/he scholar or  lay(wo)man, would continue
to use the same senses after transferring residence  to the Southern
Hemisphere, despite the fact that the sun appears to move in the  contrary direction.

_The Annual Cyclopaedia of the year 1862_ New York: D. Appleton ^ Compan7y,
1863 [date given inccorectly as 1865 on the title page], no ISBN, article on
"Meteorology" page 578 column 1 "the resulting wind at the surface takes a
movement in cyclonic curves (tretrograde in northern latitudes, or in a
direction the reverse of that of the hands of a watch, face upward)" and "Mr.
Galton...asserts that the occurrence of direct rotation sof vast discs of air  (that
is,those turning in the direction opposite of that of the cyclone, namely,
in that of the hands of a watch) are also common...and these winds he proposed
to name anti-cyclones."  Aside from providing the 1862 date given in MWCD11
for "anticyclone" (MWCD10 had 1877), this gives another synonym for
"counterclockwise", namely "retrograde".  I strongly suspect that  "retrograde" is from
astronomical usage, referring to a planet or satellite  whose roation is in
the opposite direction to its revolution around its primary,  in which case the
antonym for "retrograde" would be "direct."

       - James A.  Landau