The Word of the Day for October 18 is:
Oct. 18th, 2002 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
senoritafishI've always thought this was a neat word - I like that it only used to mean a bad hair day.
From Merriam-WebsterL
widdershins \WIH-der-shinz\ (adverb)
: in a left-handed, wrong, or contrary direction
: counterclockwise
Example sentence:
"He turned to his right, knowing that it is unlucky to walk about a church widdershins." (Dorothy Sayers, _The Nine Tailors_)
Did you know?
Legend holds that demons always approached the devil widdershins. Not surprisingly, such a path was considered evil and unlucky. By the mid-1500s, English speakers had adopted "widdershins" (from the Middle High German "wider," meaning "back, against," and "sinnen," meaning "to travel") for anything following a path opposite to the direction the sun travels across the sky (that is, counterclockwise). But in its earliest known uses "widdershins" was far less malignant; it was used simply to describe a case of bad hair in which unruly locks stood on end or fell the wrong way.
From Merriam-WebsterL
widdershins \WIH-der-shinz\ (adverb)
: in a left-handed, wrong, or contrary direction
: counterclockwise
Example sentence:
"He turned to his right, knowing that it is unlucky to walk about a church widdershins." (Dorothy Sayers, _The Nine Tailors_)
Did you know?
Legend holds that demons always approached the devil widdershins. Not surprisingly, such a path was considered evil and unlucky. By the mid-1500s, English speakers had adopted "widdershins" (from the Middle High German "wider," meaning "back, against," and "sinnen," meaning "to travel") for anything following a path opposite to the direction the sun travels across the sky (that is, counterclockwise). But in its earliest known uses "widdershins" was far less malignant; it was used simply to describe a case of bad hair in which unruly locks stood on end or fell the wrong way.
