A timely thought

[sid]

As the days of analog timepieces fade into history, will the directions "Turn clockwise to tighten" soon lose all meaning?

Will the expression persist, complete with scholarly footnotes and diagrams?

What could possibly replace it?

Any youngsters out there who can give a current status report?

And, just for fun, what other words or phrases can you think of that belong to the past but live on in the present? (It's late, and all I can think of right now is "Hold your horses!")

Comments

Clockwise

[wilson_dizard]

There's a perfectly good synonym for counter-clockwise, that predates the introduction of clocks: "widdershins." It's a term from Lowland Scots dialect.

Another approach to describing the direction of spin comes from the worlds of subatomic physics, mathematics and geometry, where the notion of "handedness" is expressed by the term "chirality."

Unfortunately, to make things perfectly clear to themselves, physicists refer to electron spin as either "up" or "down," which correlate roughly to "clockwise" and "anticlockwise."

They had better watch it, or the Three Weird Sisters from Shakespeare's "Macbeth" will get them.

Re: Clockwise

[sid]

I think I've seen the term 'widdershins' in one of the Lord Peter Wimsey books. *Googles* Yup! Unlucky to walk about a church widdershins. I shall immediately begin employing this word! :-D