According to Silvanus Thompson in his famous (and awesome!)(c1910) calculus book the word second comes from the term "second minute".
I thought that was a neat and strange word origin (if correct).
to quote him... "When they came to require still smaller subdivisions of time, they divided each minute into 60 still smaller parts, which, in Queen Elizabeth's days, they called "second minutes" (i.e. small quantities of the second order of minuteness). Nowadays we call these small quantities of the second order of smallness "seconds"."
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According to Silvanus Thompson in his famous (and awesome!)(c1910) calculus book the word second comes from the term "second minute".
I thought that was a neat and strange word origin (if correct).
to quote him...
"When they came to require still smaller subdivisions of time, they divided each minute into 60 still smaller parts, which, in Queen Elizabeth's days, they called "second minutes" (i.e. small quantities of the second order of minuteness). Nowadays we call these small quantities of the second order of smallness "seconds"."