Clockwise means turning the way the hands of a clock go. Turn it clockwise, clockwise from the top, anticlockwise.
The direction is an accident of history: sundials in the northern hemisphere cast a shadow that way, and the first mechanical clocks copied them. In the southern hemisphere the shadow goes the other way, and clocks could as easily have gone with it.
1adverbclockwiseTurning the way the hands of a clock go.
“Turn the lid clockwise to close the jar tightly.”
clockwise is a direction.
Middle English
clokke
English
clock
English, today
clockwise
Built from
From clock + -wise. clock comes from Middle English clokke. First use appears c. 1370. From Middle English clokke, clok, cloke (“clock”), from Middle Dutch clocke (“bell, clock”), from Old Dutch klokka, from Medieval Latin clocca (“bell, clock, cloak”), probably of cel - origin, from Proto-Celtic klokkos (“bell”) (compare Welsh cloch (“bell”), Old Irish cloc (“bell, clock”)), either imitative of the sound or from Proto-Indo-European klek- (“to laugh, cackle”) (compare Proto-Germanic hlahjaną (“to laugh”)). Cognate with Old English clucge (“bell”), stq Klokke (“bell, clock”), Dutch klok (“clock, bell”), Low German Klock (“bell, clock”), German Glocke (“bell”), Danish - and Norwegian klokke (“clock, bell”), Faroese klokka (“clock, bell”), Icelandic klukka (“clock, bell”), Swedish klocka (“clock, bell”), Asturian llueca (“cowbell”), Galician - and Portuguese choca (“cowbell”), a doublet of cloak and cloche.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA