Time

A few will be aware I have been known to speak on various subjects over the years. Fundamentally these all revolve around my favourite subject of etymology. Have always enjoyed bringing this fascinating subject to others. It’s not for me to say whether the audiences have, although many have asked me to return.

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.

Night Idioms

Several words have become part of the language in being used in phrases. Last time we looked at ‘pins’ and now look at ‘night’.

While we think of ‘night’ as the last hours at the end of the day, historically the night preceded the day. Thus Monday night began when the sun went down on Sunday – and we still use the phrase ‘at the end of the day’. This was true for all European cultures except for the Greeks, who ignore the night and started their days at sunrise.

Night soil - excrement to you and me – is first recorded around 1770.

Night train - ie a service timetabled to run only after dark – appears as early as 1838, not that long after the first train services were running.

Night school is referred to as early as 1520.

Night life, meaning ‘habitual nocturnal carousing’, is seen from 1852.

Goodnight has been wished since 1896, while what is seen today as the more childish ‘nighty-night’ is recorded earlier, in 1876.

Nightwatchmen have been described since around 1200.

Nightlights have been employed since 1851 in the modern sense, but the term has been seen since the 1640s when it referred to any faint light in the night sky.

People have worked the nightshift since 1839, but the term had been used since 1710 when it referred to a garment worn by women when in bed.

Nighthawk has been used since 1610, a reference to any bird abroad at night but especially the nightjar; not until 1818 was it used to refer to one active at night.

Night-work has been seen since the 1590s, but this represented a return for the Saxons wrote about those jobs done during the hours of darkness as nihtweorc.

Fly-by-night has been used to describe someone who leaves a job or task rather hastily; but earlier, and since 1796, it was a slang term for a woman deemed to be a witch.

Nobody stayed anywhere overnight before 1959, although the term had been used to mean simply ‘one night’ since the early 14th century.

Tonight has only been one word since the early 20th century, for two hundred years it had been hyphenated as to-night, and from the 14th century had always been two words.

Nightshade, that deadly plant, has been known as such since around 1500.

Midnight oil has been burned since the 1630s.

Nightingales have been known as such since the Saxons arrived on English shores.

Dutch nightingale is not a bird but a frog.

Nightingale floor has been used since 1796 by the Japanese to describe creaking floorboards.

Nobody had a nightcap until 1818, prior to that it had been worn on the head in bed.

Fortnight has been used for around 1,500 years.

Nightmares have been around since 1300, although originally it referred to an evil female spirit afflicting men and horses in their sleep by making them feel as if they were being suffocated. The sense of ‘bad dream’ is seen from 1829, and two years later was being used to refer to any bad experience.

Nightgowns have been around since the early 15th century.

The first nightclubs opened in 1894.

Allnighters were known from 1870, but referred to anything taking up the whole night, while from 1930 it had the modern sense of referring specifically to a person staying up all night.

And my personal favourite, which should certainly be making a comeback, for while we all refer to yesterday in the modern era, a thousand years ago we also referred to yesternight.