Anonymous asked: Why is the witching hour called the witching hour if it's an instant in time— 12 o'clock— rather than a full hour?
First off, tradition states the witching hour is midnight, rather than 3 o’clock or even the amount of time between midnight and 3 in the morning. We’ll take the witching hour as being midnight.
Why is the witching hour not 12 o’clock to 1 o’clock in the morning? That is a complete hour. Rather, though, “the witching hour” is the moment of midnight, precisely.
I think linguistically, the phrase originates from an older way of stating the phrase “o’clock.” We used to need a way to describe what is digitally now 12:00000000. Instead of “12 of the clock,” or “12 o’clock,” you’d say “the hour of 12.” They both digitally mean 12:00 on the dot.
Therefore, the witching hour reflects a complete change in the hour of day, a momentous occasion marked by the traditional tolling of the bell however many times and a phrase like”the hour of the witching” or “the hour of 12” or “the hour of midnight.” It meant the hour between 12 and 1 is about to begin.
Humorously, you can note that rather than saying the “minute of the witching,” we say “hour.” This means the witching hour isn’t for example, 12:30 A.M. or 12:01 A.M. or any particularly specific time like that in between 12 and 1 AM. It isn’t even technically 12:00-12:01 A.M. It is 12:00000000 precisely in the digital sense; the twelfth hour of the clock on the mark: a transition moment.
An example of “the hour of ____” and how it is used to constructively describe an instant in time: 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock, and so forth.
- The hour of one, therefore, is when the clock strikes one, rather than the hour between one and two. One o’clock shortened itself from “one of the clock” and meant “at the hour of one,” communicating the idea of 1:00 itself. Thus: the hour of one isn’t going to incorporate “1:12” of the time “1:00-1:59 all inclusive” or something like that. SEE PHRASE: between the hour of one and the hour of three e.g. 1:00 - 3 PM. ALSO SEE: “at the hour of one o’clock,” possibly.
- This is traditionally important since we used to not have digital clocks and watches, so we had to know about when it was by some kind of precise and actually measurable block of time. When the clock strikes one o’clock, it became “the hour of one”; we framed the concept with the phrase “exactly at the hour of one” or “precisely at the hour of one.” Thus, when something was going to transpire “at the hour of one,” it was digitally going to be 1:000000000000 PLUS, given the ambivalence of knowing the time, an additional sense of “give or take a few.” There is a general window of time surrounding the moment so that the time might digitally be 1:00000000000007 and yet be considered still the hour of one. Obviously, semantics shifted through time, while still ensuring “at the hour of one” couldn’t designate potentially every time between 1:00 - 1:599999 all inclusive. Rather than that, it attempted to pinpoint 1:00 AM precisely.
Back to our witching hour:
- Thus, if you extrapolate “the hour of one” means the hour between one o’clock and two o’clock, which lasts an hour, you are wrong. The same goes for the witching hour, which transforms through that twisted logic to the hour between midnight and 1 in the morning. This remains technically inaccurate.
- The precise original meaning translates more into “the instant of midnight,” or the instant at the time when the clock struck its final toll signifying midnight. At that moment, the witching hour passed and was over, chronologically speaking, whenever the instant of 12:000000000000000000 AM passed.
- The magical consequences of the witching hour, though, perhaps confusing, commenced subsequently. The witching hour became the linguistic mirror of the bell tolling “the hour” in the square: a marker of the beginning of the period of time between midnight and then 1 o’clock. Hearing “the hour of one” implied that you might say, take a brief rest from a job. The witching hour hinted that, say, goblins might steal your supplies soon.
Anyway, those are my thoughts today. The original answer I had was shorter.
