“Eykt, eykd, f. _three or half-past three o’clock_, P.M.; many commentaries have been written upon this word, as by Pál Vidalin Skyr, Finn Johnson in H. E. [Historia Ecclesiastica Islandiæ] 1. 153 sqq. note 6, and in Horologium, etc. The time of eykd is clearly defined in K. Th. K. [Kristinnrettr Thorláks ok Ketils], 92 as the time _when the sun has past two parts of the_ ‘utsudr’ (q. v.) _and has one part left_, that is to say, _half-past three o’clock_, P.M.: it thus nearly coincides with the eccl. Lat. _nona_ (three o’clock, P.M.); and both eykt and nona are therefore used indiscriminately in some passages. Sunset at the time of ‘eykd’ is opposed to sunrise at the time of ‘dagmal,’ q. v. In Norway ‘ykt’ means a luncheon taken about half-past three o’clock. But the passage in Edda—that autumn ends and winter begins at sunset at the time of eykt—confounded the commentators who believed it to refer to the conventional Icel. winter, which (in the old style) begins with the middle of October, and lasts six months. In the latitude of Reykholt—the residence of Snorri—the sun at this time sets about half-past four. Upon this statement the commentators have based their reasoning both in regard to dagmál and eykt, placing the eykt at half-past four, P.M., and dagmal at half-past seven, A.M., although this contradicts the definition of these terms in the law. The passage in Edda probably came from a foreign source, and refers not to the Icel. winter but to the astronomical winter, viz., the winter solstice or the shortest day; for sunset at half-past three is suited not to Icel., but to the latitude of Scotland and the southern parts of Scandinavia. The word is also curious from its bearing upon the discovery of America by the ancients, _vide_ Fb. [Flateyjar-bók] l. c. This sense (_half-past three_) is now obsolete in Icel., but eykt is in freq. use in the sense of _trihorium_, _a time of three hours_; whereas in the oldest sagas no passage has been found bearing this sense,—the Bs. [Biskupa Sögur] 1, 385, 446, and Hem. [Hemings-thattr] l. c., are of the 13th and 14th centuries. In Norway ykt is freq. used metaph. of all the four meal times in the day, morning-ykt, midday-ykt, afternoon-ykt (or ykt proper), and even-ykt. In old MSS., Grág., K. Th. K. Hem. Heid. S. [Grágás, Kristinnrettr, Thorláks ok Ketils, Hemings-thattr, Heidarviga Saga], this word is always spelt eykd or eykth, shewing the root to be ‘auk’ with the fem. inflex. added; it probably first meant the _eke_-meal, answering to Engl. _lunch_, and thence came to mean the time of day at which this meal was taken. The eccl. law dilates upon the word, as the Sabbath was to begin at ‘_hora nona_’; hence the phrase, eykt helgr dagr....