"Sunwise", and for the exact same reason.
Clocks go clockwise because their predecessors did. What were their predecessors?
Sundials.
How does the shadow go around a sundial? Well, sunwise, of course.
Counterclockwise, as said in another comment, was "widdershins", from a Middle Low German phrase meaning "against the way".
I find it interesting that in Swedish the opposite of sunwise is "motsols", i.e. counter sunwise or literally "against the sun". Sunwise is called "medsols", lit. "with the sun".
I am trying to picture it, but I think the sunwise convention only works in the Northern hemisphere.
Yep - in the northern hemisphere a sundial shadow will move from west to east in a clockwise fashion; in the southern hemisphere it still goes west to east but does so moving anticlockwise.
And if I'm thinking about this correctly, people between ~20N and ~20S latitudes will have it reverse throughout the year and and sometimes be a straight line.
Wait, it's all anglo-centric?
I somehow read this comment in the voice of the cleric performing the "mawwiage" ceremony in Princess Bride.
Cleric: "Sunwise...." long, uncomfortable pause. "And for the exact same weason." Pause. "Clocks go clockwise because their pwedecessors did... and what were their pwedecessors?"
Humperdink: "Look, can we hurry this up?"
Cleric: "Sundials."
Humperdink: "Just skip to the end!"
Cleric: "Countewclockwise... as said in another comment... would be... widdershins."
Yes but, how did people know that time went sunwise before the sun?
Yes but, how did people know that time went sunwise before the sun?
Back before the solar system was fully formed, it was called "gaswise".
A guy I know owns this clock, which basically proves that everything in life is pointless and arbitrary:
I find this deeply unsettling, please delete
Weird, this feels easier to read. Less grating somehow.
I have one of these, it was a gag gift from a friend. I've had it up so long now though I have to double check which clock in looking at before I tell the time because I've got so used to it
That's pretty cool. Also, your username contains an anagram of the name of the man who owns the clock from my comment. That's also pretty cool.
Well, clocks are just mechanical sundials. Before clockwise, there was sunwise (or deosil), and clocks' movements are based off of the movement of a shadow across a sundial.
Used to be sunwise and counter-sunwise.
does that mean that "clockwise" in the southern hemisphere is backwards?
Yes, when you are in the northern hemisphere, a sundial shadow falls to the north of the gnomon (the thing that makes a shadow). This makes the shadow move from the northwest to north to northeast over a day, which is clockwise. In the southern hemisphere, the shadow from the gnomon falls to the south, so it starts in the southwest and moves to the south and then southeast, which is anticlockwise.
The most obvious way to see this is the photo of the sundial in Perth, where the hours run anticlockwise.
https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1605415745093083137?lang=en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial#In_the_Southern_Hemisphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial#/media/File:Sundial_in_Supreme_Court_Gardens,_Perth.jpg
Turnwise and widdershins. I read it in a book once.
Sunwise, as it was based on the movement of the sun during day (in the Northern hemisphere). As watch faces were modelled after sundials, sunwise and clockwise describe the same direction.
Turnwise is a word invented by Pratchett for a book, but it's clearly based on sunwise. He also used widdershins in his book, which is indeed the unmodified antonym to sunwise.
Not just any book. The discworld series. It's the direction the disc rotates! He has so many easy to miss spots of genius. Amongst many easy to see spots of genius
I have found my people.
Deosil (sunwise) was the opposite of widdershins (against the usual). Both had a wide range of uses too, not just directionality.
Turnwise and widdershins
I always heard it as 'deosil and widdershins'
As a non-native English reader, I now am not sure if this is a Pratchett reference or if these are actual round world terms...
Pratchett's just using real-world (albeit archaic) terms: widdershins and deosil.
Imagine you're in the Northern Hemisphere and you face east toward the rising sun. Over the course of the day, the sun will seem to move to the south, and then set in the west. This forms a "sunwise" turn, which is what we now call "clockwise" because we made clocks in imitation of sundials.
In Swedish it's called medsols and motsols. The iteral translation is with the sun and against the sun.
Deosil, which is the direction the shadow on a sundual moves (in the Northern Hemisphere).
This turned out to be a surprisingly fascinating question lol.
Semi related: QI uploaded this bit the other day about an aboriginal tribe that can flawlessly pinpoint north/east/south/west.
To your second question, the direction of clockwise is mostly influenced by sundials. In the northern hemisphere the shadows move in a clockwise direction, and so the early clocks made in the northern hemisphere mimicked that. In the southern hemisphere it's naturally reversed, but because so much of that hemisphere is either empty ocean or colonized lands, the clocks move in the same direction. Bolivia had a sort of flash in the pan moment in the news about a decade back for reversing their clock direction on a big central clock (think like big ben) as a way of staking their independence from a colonial past.
On the first question, I have no idea. But in Sweden they use terms that translates to "with the sun" and "against the sun" but I don't remember what they are without googling it.
As someone who still confuses these "turn it around that way" - jiggles hand in vague motion- "oops no the other way" usually works just fine.
In czech, we have a phrase "jak sa kráje chleba" (same way as a bread is sliced). Problem is, that (at least in my social group) nobody knows, wether it means clockwise or anticlockwise, as everybody slices the bread differently.
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