Thought it might be worthwhile sharing a snippet or two from these etymological presentations, continuing with Time. It is found woven into our language and yet why do we use multiples of twelve for various time periods? Why have we not produced a metric clock? Learn the fascinating answers to these and other questions and discover why punctuality and the humble timepieces of yesterday and today have created more than a few funny stories. There is a PowerPoint presentation to accompany this talk if required.
Physicists will tell you time is relative – which basically means time is irrelevant other than to the immediate area. To see this we need to look at time on a universal scale. We hear of how this star and those galaxies are so many light years away, a light year is how far light travels in a year (fascinating, I hear you say.
But think of it. We see the Sun every day (well most days) but it is so far away we actually see it as it was 8 minutes ago, the nearest star is Proxima Centauri seen as it was four years ago (note they see us in 2022 and are thus still have no notion of Donald Trump’s second term). If either star vanished it would take 8 minutes (or four years depending on one’s relative position) for the lights to go out. Hence time is relative to the location of the individual.
And for the etymologist I must mention minute – and also minute (ie very small). These may be pronounced differently but the origins and indeed meanings are identical. A minute (sixty seconds) is a minute (small) part of an hour and comes from the Latin prima minuta ‘the first small part’
If you think you know someone who would like to hear me speak on this subject, drop me a line.
