This is a quaint, antique word one would not expect to see in print in a newspaper these days.
So, I was caught by surprise when it popped up in a column in the Sunday Telegraph by Peter Goers.
He was writing about titles and forms of address—complaining that Australians have become informal to the point of sloppiness.
We expect to call our doctor by his first name, not his title.
And both ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ are being used less and less.
At the same time, he claimed, there is obsession with using older, imperial, titles such as ‘honourable’ (for some parliamentarians and judges) which he said was anachronistic.
‘This,’ he wrote, ‘is widdershins.’
And there it is, this lovely old word.
Basically ‘widdershins’ means ‘anticlockwise.’
But many people use it (as Peter Goers did) to mean something more like ‘going backwards.’
‘Widdershins’ is recorded in English from 1513, with the original meaning of ‘in the direction opposite to the usual, the wrong way.’
The first part of the word means (roughly) against, and the second part comes from a German source word meaning ‘journey.’
Hence, to go ‘widdershins’ is to go the wrong way.
Very early in its life in the English language ‘widdershins’ was used to mean travelling in the opposite direction to the sun.
Since the sun goes from east to west, going ‘widdershins’ was going from west to east.
But back in those days many times pieces were sun dials—and that extended the meaning of ‘widdershins’ to mean ‘anticlockwise.’
And that remains a common way to use the word to this day.
Many of the dictionaries I consulted on this way still give ‘counterclockwise’ or ‘anticlockwise’ as the main meaning.
But, as for me, I just the love the antiquated feeling of this lovely old word ‘widdershins’ (sometimes spelled ‘withershins’)—try to work it into your conversation sometime this week.
Tonight I will be a panellist on the quiz show 'Quizzical' on Sky News -- 8:30pm AEST.
My longer piece about 'monocultural' is now up on the Sky News website -- here's the link: 'Shared culture': Pauline Hanson's reasonable wish for Australia weaponised by those who resent the idea our nation should have a common social purpose | Sky News Australia
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BY THE WAY...
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
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