We’re approaching that time next week when the earth under the sun reaches momentary equality with everyone and everything, a moment known to the cognoscenti as the equinox.
On the equinox, to put it simply, everyone on earth gets 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. To put it complexly, there are all sorts of minor exceptions, especially at the equator, where days and nights are close to equal anyhow all year round.
But this is a comment on the word itself, not a treatise on astronomy. So getting back to equinox: The first observation is that there are two equinoxes (yes, that’s the plural) every year, the vernal equinox as the sun crosses the Equator heading north at the beginning of spring, and the autumnal equinox, the one that’s coming on September 22 at 14:21 GMT this year, as the sun crosses the Equator heading south.
That’s from the perspective of the Northern Hemisphere. From the Southern, it’s the opposite. In Argentina and Australia, they’re welcoming their vernal equinox on that day.
Next, we note that the opposite of equinox — opposite in the sense of going to greatest inequality of daylight and night around the world — is the solstice. It too occurs twice a year, around the 20th of December and the 20th of June. Again, these have different names at any given solstice in the different hemispheres. But you know that.
What is curious linguistically is the different roles of day and night. For the equinox, if you translate the medieval Latin or French (both words have been in our language for many centuries), it’s a time of equal night. For the solstice, it’s the time when the sun stands still. Night and day.
Most of our reckoning nowadays (note the days!) is done by days, not nights. We count a year as 365 days, plan to meet again in so many days, note that February usually has 28 days, and so on. Of the gloomy pre-Conquest era, when Unferth measured Beowulf and Breca’s swimming contest in nights (and for that matter measured years in winters), only a slight vestige remains, the fortnight.
So why shouldn’t it be equidies, the moment of equality for daytime around the world? Good night! Wake up, world!
