Literally, it means to take a course opposite the apparent motion of the sun viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. Widdershins is cognate with the German widersinnig, i.e., “against” + “sense”. The opposite of widdershins is deosil, or sunwise, meaning “clockwise”.
I learned this term from Terry Pratchett a few years ago as the disc in discworld rotates and the four cardinal directions are rimward, hubward, turnwise and widdershins. Instead of north south east west.
Edit: though I never knew it was a real word!
A surprising number of things on the Disc that appear to be made up fantasy are actually based on real world words, concepts, cultures, and especially bits of folklore. Sometimes messed with a bit, but oftentimes played completely straight. And it makes the jokes even better when you look it up and figure out what Pratchett was referencing when he wrote it. Some of it is quite clever.
It’s true that the Discworld is a world, and a mirror of worlds (i.e. ours).
This is a big part of why I love them so much. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t think of the “boots theory of socio-economic unfairness” from Men at Arms!
Hogswatch is fantasy Hogmanay if you squint enough, for example.
This is why the Annotated Pratchett File make for a good reading companion.
Not only that but most of them are played down not up when compared to real life. The discworld is a lot less weird than real life.
I didn’t either! You may also be interested to know that The Glooper is also real. Someone made a water computer to simulate the English economy!
Bill Phillips seems like a pretty cool guy, certainly fits the mad scientist archetype!
I actually haven’t read Making Money but I will now :)
It’s one of my favorites, but I’m a big fan of Moist so I’m a little biased
Huh, I wonder if I read terry pratchett many years ago. I keep trying to get into that now but the hold queue at my library is insane.
Anyway, I stopped to say I remember reading “widens” as a term in some book long ago, but not the context …. Maybe this is the context