antedating of "clock wise" (1882)

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:47 AM -0400 7/11/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Mon, 11 Jul 2005 04:04:40 -0700, Jonathan Lighter
><wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
>>"Rotating from the left to the right" would have been clear enough, I
>>think.  Was "clock-wise" a 19th C. SOTA ?
>
>"Right-handed" was also available (as in Sam's citation below), but OED
>only dates the rotational sense to 1825. Besides "deasil", there was also
>"with the sun" (1769), "sunways" (1774), and the earlier Scottish
>expression "sungates" (1597).

Also the later (1865) "sunwise".

>
>The good ol' Maven discusses deasil/widdershins here:
>
>http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970226
>
>The Maven notes that the path of the sun is left-to-right *when facing
>south*. As Larry suggests, this is the default orientation (austration?)
>for those in the Northern Hemisphere because the sun is in the south at
>midday (cf. "meridian", from Latin "meridianum", meaning either 'midday'
>or 'south').
>
>--Ben Zimmer
As its derivative "midi"/"Midi" does in French (whose adjectival
version is "méridionale").  Almost as nice as "mañana" meaning both
'morning' and 'tomorrow' (as well as the corresponding philosophy
thereof).  My own query about that Mavens' entry (they represent
themselves as plural, anyway) is that they claim the second half of
"deasil" is from Gaelic "sel", 'turn' or 'time'.  The OED, par
contre, claims that the origin of the second syllable of "deasil" is
unknown.  Someone's overconfident or overhesitant here.  Anyway, it's
a lovely concept, and if it's really true that there are vanishingly
true English words deriving from Scots Gaelic, a word to be treasured.

L