withershins
English edit
Etymology edit
Alteration of widder- in widdershins (a borrowing from Middle Low German) after the English cognate form wither- (“against, anti-”).
Adverb edit
withershins (not comparable)
- Alternative form of widdershins (“anticlockwise”)
- 1763, Allan Ramsay, The Gentle Shephard[1]:
- Boils up their Livers in a Warlock's pow, Rins withershins about the Hemlock low
- 1933, W.B. Yeats, Coole Park, 1929:
- The intellectual sweetness of those lines / That cut through time or cross it withershins.