The word for an hourglass or egg timer in Italian is clessidra. It derives from the Latin clepsydra which in turn comes from the Greek klepsýdra (water clock).
Clessidra is a feminine noun and takes the following articles:
- la clessidra = the hourglass
- una clessidra = a hourglass
- le clessidre = the hourglasses
- delle clessidre = (some) hourglasses
Hourglasses were commonly used by ancient people to measure il passaggio del tempo (the passage of time) up until orologi meccanici (mechanical clocks) displaced them in the 1500s.
It comprises two bulbi di vetro (glass bulbs) connected by a narrow neck that allows a regulated flow of a sabbia (sand), polvere di calcare (limestone powder), or acqua (water) from the upper bulb to the lower one. The time it takes for the substance to travel from one bulb to the other depends on the quantity and coarseness of the matter, the bulb size, and the neck width.
La clessidra è uno strumento per misurare il tempo.
The hourglass is an instrument for measuring time.
It also goes by the name of orologio a sabbia (sand clock) in Italian.
Heather Broster is a graduate with honours in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, proficient in English and Italian, as well as Japanese, Welsh, and French to varying degrees of fluency. Originally from Toronto, Heather has resided in various countries, notably Italy for a period of six years. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction.
