antedating of "clock wise" (1882)

[Laurence Horn]

>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?

Very interesting.  Thanks for the details.  I've actually wondered
for decades about this, although admittedly not often.

Larry

>
>
>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