A.Word.A.Day --Friday face

A.Word.A.Day

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Oct 14, 2019

This week’s theme
Words coined after days of the week

This week’s words
Friday face
Sunday punch
blue Monday
Sunday driver
girl Friday

Art: Satu Burke

Previous week’s theme
Pessimists and optimists from fiction who became words

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

If you have ever wondered how the days of the week were named, here’s the scoop. The ancient people named them after classical planets, which were named after gods and, well, a goddess.

Sunday is named after the sun and Monday after the moon. After that things are not so obvious.

Tuesday is after Tiw, the Germanic god of war and the sky. His Roman equivalent is Mars; hence in Spanish Tuesday is martes, in French mardi.

For Wednesday, we can thank Germanic god Woden (Scandinavian Odin). Roman equivalent is Mercury.

Thursday is Thor’s day, the Germanic god of thunder. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter.

Friday! We forgot there are females too. Let’s name a day after a goddess, after all. Friday is named after the Germanic goddess Frigga, wife of Odin whom we met on Wednesday. She’s also known as Freya. The Roman equivalent is Venus.

Saturday is obviously named after Saturn, the Roman god.

Many terms in the English language are named after days of the week, for example, Monday morning quarterback. This week we’ll look at five of them.

Friday face

PRONUNCIATION:

(FRY-day fays)

MEANING:

noun: A glum expression or a person with such an expression.

ETYMOLOGY:

From the time when Fridays were days of fasting. Earliest documented use: 1592.

NOTES:

Today, most people look forward to Fridays (TGIF: Thank God It’s Friday), but it wasn’t always so. These days Friday means the weekend is near, but back when religion ran day-to-day life, in some religions a Friday was marked as a day of fasting or at least abstaining from meat. Hence, a Friday came to be associated with a gloomy face.

USAGE:

“I see ya got your Friday face on, looking gloomy.”
Luca Di Fulvio; The Boy Who Granted Dreams; Bastei; 2015.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, US general and 34th president (14 Oct 1890-1969)

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