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Much less prosaic than the old counterclockwise and clockwise. The former is also spelled widdershins, and the latter is from Scottish Gaelic: deiseil cognate with Latin dexter 'right hand' and Sanskrit daksina 'right hand, south'.
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those have to be characters in a book, somewhere, sometime.
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Widdershins is good old English and deasil, as you say, Gaelic. Is there a Gaelic version of widdershins and an English version of deasil?
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Is there a Gaelic version of widdershins?
Well, I don't have a Scottish Gaelic dictionary, but there is a term in Irish (Gaelic): tuathal 'direction against the sun, wrong direction'; dul tuathal 'to go against the direction of the sun, anti-clockwise'. Irish forms of the Scottish Gaelic term: deiseal 'righhand direction, direction of the sun' dul deiseal 'to follow the direction of the sun, to go clockwise. The left hand in Irish is cle and the right is deis; there's also an older form deas which also means 'south'. Tuath also means 'left' or 'north' in Old Irish.
So, I guess, a good word could be tuathal.
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an English version of deasil?
Clockwise seems to be it. BTW, the shins in widdershins means sun also. So the meaning in Germanic is 'against the sun' like in the Gaelic.
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formerly known as etaoin...
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etaoin-- Thanks, I'd forgotten about the Scottish Gaelic dictionaries being on line. I was using print copies for the Irish. I see in MacBains that a gloss for deiseil is 'sun-ward', so I guess that's a good term for clockwise in English.
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It just dawned on me that this might have something to do with the Irish blessing about the wind being at your back and the sun in your face.
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If one stands on the north pole and looks at the earth spinning below, it looks like it's moving counter-clockwise under one's feet. If one is facing north at the equator the sun appears to be moving counter-clockwise... did someone from the southern hemisphere decide what *wise meant in order to redefine up?  crossthreading-e
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Widdershins reminds me of German "wieder" meaning against, and "Schein" = appearance. But I could find no German word
combinging them.
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You're right about German wieder and Old English wiðer 'against', but the shins is cognate with OHG sint 'way, side', sinnan 'to go, to strive', sindon 'to travel' (from a PIE *sent- 'to go, set out; perceive'. The one citation I could find for withershins in OE is wiðersinnis, which is why -- I guess -- most dictionaries say the word is borrowed from MLG. I misread the entry in the OED to say the shins part was related to English sun, but it's not. There is a Widerschein in German that means reverberation. There's a good online German-English-German dictionary here: http://dict.leo.org/.
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Clockwise seems to be it.
I just remembered sungates. A quick check in the brick and mortar OED connects that to sunways.
Regarding deiseal and tuathal, knowing how unreliable Gaelic spelling is for the uninitiated, how would they be pronounced?
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Regarding deiseal and tuathal, knowing how unreliable Gaelic spelling is for the uninitiated, how would they be pronounced?
In SAMPA, something like: /'deSl/ and /'twA:l/; and in English orthography, something like: deshl and twahl. This would be for Irish as Micheal O Siadhail, the author of Learning Irish, describes it.
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Dear Faldage, as a folk etymologist, the "gate" in sungates
reminds me of German verb "gehen" to go.
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sungates
I see in the OED, that sungates is a Scots term for sunways. This entry pointed me at the OE sunn-ganges 'in the directionof the sun's movement, in the direction of the sun'. This gang is, as you suggest Bill, related to English go, German gehen.
Also, in Boswerth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary under sunn-ganges I found: "To move with the sun was considered lucky, to move in the reverse direction unlucky; the latter method is consequently taken by witches in their ceremonies. So Spenser, 'She turned her contrary to the sun ... for she the right did shunne.' Cf. Icel. sólar-sinnis 'with the sun'."
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to move in the reverse direction unlucky; the latter method is consequently taken by witches in their ceremonies.yeah, those witches wouldn't want to be lucky... 
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to move in the reverse (counter-clockwise)direction unlucky; the latter method is consequently taken by witches in their ceremonies.< Partly right etaoin, the widdershins direction is used by witches who practice so-called "black" magic. Here's a site that defines some terms. http://www.olywa.net/cagle/webchild/occult.htmlNot endorsing in any way, just supplied for informational purposes. OK?
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those have to be characters in a book, somewhere, sometime.
Well, they aren't characters, but "widdershins" makes an appearance in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of (excellent) novels, where the planet the characters inhabit is, in fact, flat (and carried on the backs of four elephants who in turn march around the back of a giant turtle). Instead of north, south, east, and west, the pricipal directions on the Discworld are rimwards, hubwards, turnwise and widdershins.
But along your line of thought, there is an exit on Rt. 89 in New Hampshire (up towards the Vermont border) that lists the towns Enfield and Canaan. For quite some time I tried to convince my wife that our daughter should be named Enfield if a boy and Canaan if a girl (that was after my initial suggestion of Fenway for either gender was rejected).
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to move in the reverse (counter-clockwise)direction unlucky; the latter method is consequently taken by witches in their ceremonies
my parents were generally not superstition.. but bouncing between here and a knitting BB, i was reminded.. my mother used to get very annoyed when i wound wool counter clockwise.
she would knock the ball out of my hands,(with out touching it) and tell me to 'Do it right! (i am double dexterious, and when i got tired of holding the ball in my left hand and guiding the thread/yarn round the ball clockwise, i would switch hands, and hold the ball in my right hand, and wrap counterclockwise with my left..)
she offered no explaination on why i was doing it wrong...but it was very clear she considered it taboo behaviour.
reading this has me thinking, she might have been more superstitious than i thought.
knitting today is much freer and free form than it was when i was a child, then, many old knitters often articulated firm rules about what could or couldn't (or should and shouldn't) be done. these rigid rules(rulers) today are are generaly refered to as the the knitting police my mother could have/would have been a captain in the knitting police--and my knitting was unacceptable to my mother, even though it looks like anyone elses, since i knit left handed. and while that is perfectly normal on most of the european continent, in ireland and UK, knitters tend to knit right handed..(that is, they hold the working yarn in their right hand)--
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my mother used to get very annoyed when i wound wool counter clockwise.
Interesting. My grandmother would become quite agitated if I replaced the bread (Italian loaf, i.e., a round loaf flat on the bottom and convex on the top) on the cutting board upsidedown. Her only explanation was that it was "bad luck".
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i knit left handed. and while that is perfectly normal on most of the european continent, in ireland and UK, knitters tend to knit right handed
How intriguing--these are the opposites of the way they drive!
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the opposites of the way they drive
Or either that or USns got it wrong, one. When's the last time you went through a drive-through ATM?
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> drive-through ATM
2 plain, 2 purl.... they wreck my addition ;)
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of troy >>i knit left handed. and while that is perfectly normal on most of the european continent, in ireland and UK, knitters tend to knit right handed
Jackie >>How intriguing--these are the opposites of the way they drive!
bingley >> Think about it. If you're facing the front of the car, what side does the driver sit on, the left or the right?
Bingley
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Every time I drive, I face the front of the car. I sit on the left (here) and drive on the right.
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In reply to:
Every time I drive, I face the front of the car.
Even when you're reversing?
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Most of the time, yes--I use the mirrors.
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Most of the time, yes--I use the mirrors
oh yes, me too.. i find if turn my head round, i 'stear' wrong.. but if i watch the mirrors, i am fine. --an aspect of my dyslexia-- nothing really to do with reading, but with how my mind processes information.
i went to a party, a few years ago now, many guests had arrived before me, the long 200(meters or so) driveway, narrow to begin with, was lined with cars (both sides!)
i backed my car in... all the way to the end, to make it easier to unload, (and to pull out, in case i had to move it in an emergency) the though occurred to me, i might be less able to contol my car as the party progressed, and pulling out, would be easier if influenced...
i used my exterior mirrors to do all the backing up (my car was stuffed to the rooftop with 'things' i brought to the party.)
needless to say, i didn't leave a series of dents and dings in the other cars!
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i find if turn my head round, i 'stear' wrong
And if your car is hitched to a trailer you're steering double-wrong, or right.
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When steering the car in full flight
With a trailer (whether heavy or light)
Good nuncle declares
“Things work better in pairs:
Two wrongs in reverse make a right!”
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In reply to:
In SAMPA, something like: /'deSl/ and /'twA:l/; and in English orthography, something like: deshl and twahl.
You've got "deiseal" exactly right, but O'Siadhail's Conamara Irish would surely render "tuathal" as something like "tu:@l" (the standard form would be "tu:h@l"). At any rate, the stress would fall on the "u", not the "a".
You mentioned "deas" meaning "south"
Note also the words "deas" meaning "nice", and "dea-" meaning "good". This relationship between "right-hand" and rightness, goodness, etc. is common to a whole bunch of IE languages and Finnish.
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er, can you review what vowel them @'s stand for? Ta.
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Thanks for the correction. I never took Irish, though I've been meaning to get around to it one of these days. It's good that we have a Gaelic person here for these kinds of questions.
The '@' is a schwa. The sound at the end of sofa.
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schwaoh. d@  while we're here, I've always pronounced schwa: schwah. is it actually schw@?
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Another way of hearing the sound of schwah: it's the u in "circus."
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the sound of schwah: it's the u in "circus
What?!? I say circus with a definite "uh" sound for the u, as in humbug. Is this the schwa sound? Or have I been mispronouncing it all my life? (Wouldn't be the only thing.)
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Great question. I've always pronounced it /Swa:/ or sometimes /Sva:/, but I looked up the word in Klein's Etymological Hebrew Dictionary and here's what he gives: ShV’ (that's shin vav aleph). With points to indicate vowels you get /S@va’/ with the schwa sound coming between the /S/ and the /v/. Etymology: "Borrowed from Syr. /S@veya’/ (= the seven points), lit. 'even' or 'equal' (points), name of the accent mark [here's a glyph of schwa which looks like our colon under the letter in question], which corresponds to the Heb. accent /zakif/. Syr. /sh@veya’/ derives from Syr. /sh@va’/ (was like or equal), which is related to Heb. /shavah/ (was even smooth or like)." Some medieval Hebrew grammarians spelled schwa with a beth instead of a vav, but it would have been pronounced the same, though changing the words numerological value. So both of us were pronouncing "wrong". Especially since there's a glottal stop at the end.
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Okay, maybe it's like the i in circus?
("In whose pronunciation?", of course)
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