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by Izkata 1620 days ago
> or even a name for that gap

From the article:

> The period of wakefulness that followed was known as "the watch"

Other terms for that time of night:

The witching hour (which almost sounds like a corruption of "the watch") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witching_hour

Wee small hours - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wee_small_hours

1 comments

Erkich's own words, both his original paper and his website, acknowledge the lack of a distinct name. He suggested generic terms "watch" and "watching" may have been used throughout a long period of British history to describe the hypothesised universal period of wakefulness based on one primary source each. One appears to be a prayer which refers to "between one morning watch and another" without hinting what a "morning watch" is, another is a devotional text calling on people to watch their first waking thoughts are set on God, where there are rather obvious alternative interpretations of the words "watch" and "first"...

The notion of "witching hour" is predicated on the idea that spirit activity takes place when most people are asleep, and "the wee small hours" is a reference to the entire period between midnight and dawn. If the closest word a language had to "lunch" was "afternoon", I'd probably conclude that culture generally didn't have an important midday meal!

https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/SleepWeHaveLostPr... https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/roger-ekirch/sleep-research/...