Widdershins

According to Merriam-Webster Online, widdershins -- which comes in at number seven on their list of Top Ten Funny-Sounding and Interesting Words -- means "in a left-handed or contrary direction; counterclockwise." They offer this example:

"And the waves beat upon the one hand, and upon the other the dead leaves ran; and the clouds raced in the sky, and the gulls flew widdershins." — Robert Louis Stevenson, The Song of the Morrow, 1896

Although my research shows disagreement about the origin of the term and its varied meanings over time, according to Merrian-Webster, "English speakers got widdershins from an old German word meaning 'to go against,' and by the mid-1500s we were using the word as we use it today – as a synonym for counterclockwise."

I recall first encountering the word when I was seven or eight in a book of fairy tales in which a young woman -- probably a princess, since it was a fairy tale -- disappeared when she ran widdershins around a church to fetch a ball that had gone astray. I can't recall if she encountered a dragon or was turned into one, but I recall that "funny-sounding and interesting word" widdershins very well.

It came to mind today because I noticed that I was walking widdershins around the basement while waiting for something to load on the computer. Which got me to wondering why one walks a particular direction, why NASCAR racers drive widdershins around the track, for example, and so on. So I went looking for an explanation and found too many conflicting ones to be of any use.

I was most intrigued, however, by this additional bit of information from Merriam-Webster:  "For the first 200 years of the word's life, however, it had another meaning as well – it was used to describe that particular kind of bad hair day when unruly hair stands on end or simply falls the wrong way."

My father, who cut my hair until I was 18, complained that my hair grew backwards.

My mother tells me that my grandfather used to make the same complaint about my father's hair. By the time I knew my father, he did not have enough hair for me to tell which way it grew. 

I never could make sense of what that meant. To me, if hair was growing backwards, that meant it was growing into my head and not out of it. Of course, what he meant was that it was falling the wrong way. Today I am painfully aware of this truth since I can never get a decent haircut, at least not one that looks good for more than two or three days. My hair has cowlicks in all directions. The hair on the left side of my head behaves normally and lies down. The hair on the right side prefers to do a Dagwood Bumstead imitation and grow out and up.

So now at the ripe old age of 64, I find out that the problem is my hair grows widdershins. I will try that on the stylist next time I go in and see what kind of reaction I get.