The terms clockwise and counter-clockwise -anti-clockwise for those whom speak the King’s English – is most often used to describe traversing the circumference of a circle. For example, a roundabout is driven counter-clockwise in the United States but clockwise in the United Kingdom. Hurricanes rotate counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere due to the Coriolis effect, as does the earth when viewed from either the North or South pole.
Clockwise/counter-clockwise became vernacular upon clocks replacing time based on the sun’s position in the late eighteenth century with the advent of modern production techniques. Digital clocks are now ubiquitous, so when do the terms become archaic and fall out of use? To children and young adults, the terms border on meaningless as they rarely encounter an analog clock much less been taught how to tell time by reading a clock face. And what is its replacement? Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey? Turn right/turn left as in a steering wheel, though manually-driven cars may also be approaching obsolescence. Language constantly evolves and would expect clockwise/counter-clockwise to be replaced, though I might not live long enough to witness it.
Image Credits
- “Clockface Holy Trinity Cathedral Port of Spain” by Mark Morgan Trinidad B is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- “Clockface” by Timothy Valentine is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
- “Clockface” by Timothy Valentine is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
