widdershins

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The Word of the Day for July 11 is:

widdershins   \WID-er-shinz\   adverb 
     : in a left-handed, wrong, or contrary direction : counterclockwise 

Example sentence:
     In the book, the members of the coven hold hands and dance widdershins 
around the fire. 

Did you know? 
     By the mid-1500s, English speakers had adopted "widdershins" (which is 
from the Middle High German "wider," meaning "back against," and "sinnen," 
meaning "to travel") for anything following a path that is opposite to the 
apparent direction of the sun as it travels across the sky in the Northern 
Hemisphere (or opposite the direction of the movement of the shadow on a 
sundial or the hands on a clock). In its earliest known uses, "widdershins" was 
used to describe cases of bad hair in which unruly locks stood on end or fell 
the wrong way. But because many people in times past considered the widdershins 
direction to be "backwards," it has long been associated with magic, 
witchcraft, and, sometimes, the devil. 





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