The little word clock is bothering Anne Fitzgerald from Clontarf. She asks if there is a connection between Irish clog, a bell, and clog, a clock: she also wants to know if there is a connection between the slang `to clock', to strike, hit, and the word for the instrument that tells the time.
In the early Middle Ages words for a bell which were obviously related sprang up in the Teutonic countries as well as in those whose languages were Celtic. A bell was known since the 8th century in Merovingian Latin (used in Gaul and western Germany from 500 to 700 AD) as clocca: Old Irish had cloc: Old High German had cloccon and chlocchon: and Middle German had klocken, to strike, knock, which survives in Irish schoolboy slang. The early diffusion of these words was apparently connected with the diffusion of Christianity and was confined to northern and western Europe (in the southern Romanic languages the word for a bell was campana).
The place of origin of the various words for the northern and western bells is undetermined, but on historical considerations most scholars refer to these words as being of Celtic origin. They are echoic, imitating the noise of the early handbells which were made of sheet iron and of a quadrilateral shape: the cast-iron circular bell was of a later date. Clock as a word for a timepiece was introduced to England about 1300 with the Dutch striking clocke, probably an instrument with bells on which the hours were struck mechanically.
Auspicious is a word consistently abused by many local politicians, according to Mary White of Wexford, who says that they seem to think it means `important'. She heard one of them say that he considered the 1798 Commemoration auspicious. The word has an interesting history. The Romans foretold the future through birds. Sometimes the priest would watch their flight or observe them eating: sometimes he would examine the content of their stomachs. This process was called auspicium, which comes from two Latin words, avis, a bird and specere, to look at. (The Latin U and V were the same letter). The auspicia were consulted before any great event, elections, for instance, or the departure of any army on a campaign. Auspicium gave auspiciosus, favoured by the auspices, and from that the English adjective comes. Was D. J. Carey birdwatching recently, I wonder?