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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

withershins en · ADV

Etymology

Alteration of widder- in widdershins (a borrowing from Middle Low German) after the English cognate form wither- (“against, anti-”).

Meanings

  1. (alt-of, alternative, not-comparable) Alternative spelling of widdershins (“anticlockwise”).
    • Boils up their Livers in a Warlock's pow, Rins withershins about the Hemlock low 1763, Allan Ramsay, The Gentle Shephard:
    • The intellectual sweetness of those lines / That cut through time or cross it withershins. 1933, W.B. Yeats, Coole Park, 1929: