Uurteiden

Uurteiden is a historical Dutch term that refers to a division of the day into a series of consecutive time periods. The concept appears in regional records and texts from the late medieval period through the early modern era, and it was used in contexts such as maritime logs, agricultural schedules, and clerical routines. The exact length of an uurteid was not standardized and could vary by locale and period, making it a flexible, practical unit rather than a fixed measure.

Etymology and form: The word combines uur (hour) with a historical plural or collective suffix related to tijd (time). Attestations show spellings such as uurteide or uurteiden in Middle Dutch and Early Modern Dutch sources, reflecting dialectal variation in its formation and usage. The term is typically treated as a unit of time rather than a specific fraction of an hour.

Usage and context: Uurteiden functioned as a way to organize daily work, watches, and routines before the widespread adoption of standardized clock time. In nautical and rural records, tasks and shifts were described in terms of successive uurteiden, sometimes paired with ordinal indicators like “the first uurteid.” The lack of a fixed duration means that uurteiden were inherently adaptable to local practices and seasonal daylight.

Decline and legacy: With the gradual standardization of timekeeping and the modern hour, the use of uurteiden declined and eventually disappeared from common usage. Today the term survives primarily in historical texts as a marker of pre-modern time concepts and regional linguistic heritage.

See also: timekeeping, hour, tijd, watch. References: historical Dutch dictionaries and maritime archives.