Thursday, November 14, 2019

2019 - Day 318/47 - Thursday...Widdershins...

It was not nearly as dark driving home this afternoon as it was yesterday afternoon. It was a grey and relatively gloomy day, all things considered, but the clouds broke lat in the afternoon and there was a little trace of sunshine. It is not supposed to freeze tonight, but I still have the water turned off at the chicken coop and out in the pasture. The cattle trough is full and tomorrow when I get home, I will turn the water back on and leave it at that. I do not think there are any freezing temperatures in the seven day forecast. A full day of guiding some fun colleagues through day two of a GRI class. I will guide a new member orientation Ethics class tomorrow, then another day of GRI next week, and that will be it for me this month. I like it a lot.

Widdershins -- Adverb. in a left-handed, wrong. or contrary direction. counterclockwise. "Magic is not science. It is not parlor tricks. It is not dancing widdershins around the cemetery at midnight." Richard Whittaker, The Austin Chronicle, September 24, 2017

Did You Know? 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 movements that went opposite to the apparent clockwise direction (as seen from the northern hemisphere) of the sun traveling across the sky and were therefore considered evil or unlucky. The word originates from the Old High German widar, meaning "back" or "against," and sinnen, meaning "to travel."

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