WATCH

Wild Word Friday!

The other evening, my husband and I were WATCHing a movie that was produced in the 1990s. As I WATCHed I was also weaving in warp threads on a scarf I’d just completed. I had just relaxed into that laid back, pre-sleep mode when in the movie an alarm clock went off, an alarm clock that had the exact same annoying ring as a clock we’d once owned. Suddenly, I was wide awake, ready for an eventful day that was still 10 hours away! Evidently that alarm sound, programmed into my brain nearly twenty years ago, didn’t fade with time. I wish the rest of my memory was as well-programmed!

Moments like that make it clear why two seemingly unrelated words – WATCH and wake – have sprung from the same ancient Indo-European base word, weg-.  Weg– means to be active. From this base, the Anglo Saxon language derived its word wæcce – wake – and the Middle English derived wacche, which eventually morphed into our modern word WATCH. In its noun form, WATCH was first a reference to the act of staying awake to keep WATCH in the night.  Eventually it was also used to designate to a candle that had been divided into sections, each of which burned for a known period of time. It’s not difficult to understand why, when the spring-driven personal timepiece was invented, that it was called a WATCH. The photo above is of the earliest-known dated WATCH. Beautiful, isn’t it? The date? 1530.

I’ve had two very special WATCHes in my life. One belonged to my maternal grandmother. The other was a twentieth wedding anniversary gift from my husband.

Do you own a WATCH that is special to you?

Blessings!

Sue

(Photo from Wikipedia. Some information from Webster’s New World Dictionary.)