This page, devoted to expressions and idioms related to time and/or calendars, is not final. If you know similar expressions, please send them to me, whether you know their origin or want to discover it.
I have deliberately omitted proverbs and sayings that need no specific explanation or no calendar-related clarification.
English week
The history of the weekend, since that is what this is ultimately about, began... because of Monday.
At the end of the 15th century, workers (apparently first in the leather trade) decided to stop working on Monday and close shop. Paid every Saturday, they would “go for a drink” on Monday (which became “Saint Monday” in the 18th century).
As a side note, in Romans, Saint Monday is raviole-eating day.
This spread in England (where it seems to have started), France, Switzerland...
In the 18th century, English employers grew concerned that these outings sometimes became heavy drinking sessions, and in 1854 an English law imposed work stoppage on Saturday at 2 PM. This was the “English week.” The law was not respected.
The issue returned in 1855, with an English association proposing afternoon shop closure. Factory owners were interested and proposed trading Saint Monday for Saturday afternoon. In 1874, an English law was passed in that direction.
This English initiative spread widely, including to the United States.
Then Americans asked for all Saturday off. They were encouraged by the Jewish community, which struggled to observe Sabbath with only half a non-working Saturday.
In 1940, the weekend as we know it emerged in the United States.
It became established in France in the 1950s: “Sunday can only be a rest day if on Saturday the wife can do cleaning and laundry.” Not my words.
I would agree with those who place the origin of the five-day workweek in England, if I had not read in a 1923 newspaper, under the pen of F. Bretano: "Paris trades practice the 'English week,' which in the 12th-13th centuries was the French week. From the French it passed to the English, who in their spirit of tradition kept it. From England it has now returned to France under a new name."
Year forty
I do not care about it any more than about year forty means giving no importance to the thing or person in question. In short: I do not care.
Four hypotheses on the origin:
- An old fear of year 1000 later transformed into year 40. Quitard's hypothesis does not explain 40. Still, in Quebec, a prophecy announced the end of the world in 1740, matching year 1000 plus Christ's 40 years.
- Expression used by royalists after 1789 to say year 40 of the Republic would never come. Maybe. But why 40?
- Same logic from sans-culottes about year 40 of Louis XVI's reign.
- “Forty” as a distortion of “Alcoran,” a 14th-century word for Quran, used in expressions like “to understand no more than algebra or the Alcoran.”
Le Robert notes, rightly, that “forty” is a number of waiting (40 days of the Flood, Moses's 40 days on Sinai, and Christ's 40 hours in the tomb).
Another lead deserves attention, since the expression dates from the 1790s: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie explains at the end of his climate-history book that 1740 was a dreadful year burned into memory, even if people later made light of it.
That year saw three uninterrupted freezing months in winter 1739-1740, then spring and summer ruined by long floods. There was no wheat and no wine. More than 200,000 deaths were counted, and French demographic growth was blocked for nearly 10 years by this climatic shock.
Refusing to account for major things could thus mean not caring about year 1740. Why not?
Greek calends
To postpone until the Greek calends means postponing to the end of time.
For those who read this site, easy to understand: calends were the first day of each Roman month and did not exist in the Greek calendar.
Because this ruckus comes from the Muslim month Ramadan and the fasting period linked to it. Fasting lasts from sunrise to sunset. But evenings, especially Id al-Fitr, are marked by feasts and celebrations that can be... noisy.
And since Algerian pronunciation of Ramadan is Ramdãn, the word was French-adapted in that direction around 1890.
Note in passing the notion of noise, suggesting volume more than quality.
The word was reused by World War I soldiers in this sense of disorder.
As for prostitutes of the same period, one can imagine what they meant by “doing the ramdam” or “going to ramdam.” Language has energy.
April fool
Let's be clear: origins of this expression are highly uncertain.
- Francois, Duke of Lorraine, held prisoner by Louis XIII at Nancy castle, escaped on 1 April by swimming across a river, leading people in Lorraine to say they had been given a fish to guard.
- "Allusion to the back-and-forth made by Jesus at the beginning of April, from Annas to Caiaphas, Caiaphas to Pilate, Pilate to Herod, Herod to Pilate." Quitard attributes this to Fleury de Bellingen.
- When Charles VI supposedly wanted in 1564 to start the year on 1 April, the change was poorly received; people kept giving New Year gifts on 1 January by habit, but on the newly fixed New Year day they gave fake trick gifts; “and as in April the Sun had just left Pisces, these mock gifts were called April fish.” Quitard's hypothesis also fits his proposed dating.
And now my favorite hypothesis:
- This “fish” would come from peissoun, later paisson (pasture right). The droit de paisson allowed peasants to graze animals in woods or harvested land from September to end of March. Strictly speaking, there is a slight legal difference between paisson and common pasture, but not one that changes the core idea.
Thus one reads in a 1607 legal text by Nivernais jurist Guy Coquille: "meadows are left for common grazing from the time cut grass is removed until Our Lady's feast in March."
With the lord's permission, extensions could exist: an arriere paisson, an April paisson.
Some joking peasants told neighbors there was April grazing when there was not. Gullible neighbors took their animals out for nothing or got shouted at.
That paissoun d'avril would have become the April Fool's fish.
This hypothesis is attributed to Mistral. If anyone can confirm, I am interested.
Rabelais's quarter-hour
From the Dictionnaire de Trevoux (1743-1752):
“Bad moments to endure, like those in which Rabelais found himself when he had to settle at inns and had no money to pay expenses. See at the end of details of his life, before his works, the amusing stratagem he once used in Lyon to be taken to Paris at no cost, having no money left to finish his journey. After paying a sum once and for all, one is spared this unpleasant Rabelais quarter-hour and has the pleasure of leaving the tavern without settling with the host.
And:
“The thought of death announces a quarter-hour that for everyone is the Rabelais quarter-hour.
Note: the stratagem was this: to leave Lyon without paying his innkeeper, Rabelais displayed two packets in his room labeled “poison for the king” and “poison for the queen.” The innkeeper alerted authorities, who escorted Rabelais to Paris. Francis I laughed at his friend's prank and pardoned him.
About Doctor Cottard (in Swann in Love), Proust writes that he was insatiable for idiom explanations, wanting precise meanings for expressions like “beauty of the devil,” “blue blood,” “a life of chair-legs,” “Rabelais's quarter-hour,” etc.
If Swann in Love publication is dated to 1913, note that Jules Verne wrote in 1848 a verse comedy titled Le quart d'heure de Rabelais.
Looking for noon at two o'clock
According to Quitard and Richelet, this idiom comes from an old way of counting hours in Italy (and in France, per Quitard) in the 15th century.
According to Richelet, hours were counted beyond twelve up to twenty-four, starting from sunset. Since at noon, even in longest days, one counted beyond fourteen in that system, “looking for noon at two” means looking for something where it is not.
Week of four Thursdays
This expression means never, much like Greek calends.
Do not read “Thursday” as a reference to the former school-free Thursday of recent decades (later replaced by Wednesday).
In fact, the week of four Thursdays was first... the week of two Thursdays.
It supposedly dates to the 15th century: when a Pope (Benedict XII according to some, Eugene III according to others) entered Paris on a Thursday, weather was so bad that ceremony was postponed to Friday; that day, by sovereign authority, the Pope decreed Friday would count as Thursday so Parisians could feast, hence week of two Thursdays.
In the 16th century, it became week of three Thursdays. Rabelais writes in Pantagruel: "That year, calends were found in Greek breviaries... and there occurred the week so famed in annals, called the week of three Thursdays..."
Some later saw in the first week of a century beginning on Monday (like 1900) a “week of three Thursdays,” since first Thursday was first of month, year and century. Rather stretched, as this could apply to all weekdays.
Camille Flammarion, in Le Figaro (2 January 1892), offered another explanation: a traveler circling the world east-west loses a day relative to those staying put and may think it is Thursday when it is Friday; one traveling west-east gains a day and may think Thursday when it is Wednesday. Two false Thursdays plus the true one = three Thursdays. Not very convincing.
Still, by the 19th century the expression became week of four Thursdays.
Victor Hugo received friends on Thursdays. When first inviting Monselet, he wrote:
May each Thursday now bring you to my home. And addressing God himself, I told him: make us a week of four Thursdays.
So, after an initial real event (week of two Thursdays), were later Thursday inflations mostly literary? Decide for yourself.
See you one of these four days
This expression means see you soon and is close to see you one of these days.
It is an ellipsis of one of these four mornings.
Why four? The number appears in many idioms (four corners of the world, bend over backwards, split hairs into four...) and may owe its success to human and natural structure: four limbs, four seasons, four elements, four cardinal directions.
Why mornings? No idea.
Sabbatical year
To take a sabbatical year or leave means, in short, taking a career break.
The expression comes from the biblical rule that every 7 years, the Israelite farmer and land rest:
“Leviticus 25:2-7: Speak to the children of Israel and say: when you enter the land I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field and prune your vineyard and gather produce. But the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord: you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself from your harvest nor gather grapes from your unpruned vine; it shall be a year of rest for the land. What the land produces during its Sabbath shall be food for you, your servant, your hired worker, and the foreigner with you, for your livestock and wild animals.
Year of grace
This locution designates each year of the Christian era. It appears to be attested only from the 14th century.
So it is hard to believe it came from Christian fear of apocalypse in year 1000, with each year spared thereafter treated as “of grace.”
Its true origin? No clear answer. In any case, using it for years before 1300 is anachronistic.
Still, it survives today. In the Canadian law text Loi sur l'heure reglementaire, one reads:
“2 Unless expressly stated otherwise, a) “month” means, where used under section 1, a civil month; and b) “year” means, where used under section 1, a civil year and corresponds to the locution “year of grace.”
Chime (plombe)
An expression like “I have been waiting for three plombes” means “I have waited for three hours.”
Plombe may be onomatopoeic, evoking the sound of a hammer striking a large bell.
It appears in a letter from convicts to Louis XVIII in 1815. More information here.
107 years
An expression like “I am not going to wait 107 years” means “I do not have forever.”
Construction of Notre-Dame de Paris is said to have lasted 107 years, which felt like eternity to Parisians tired of this endless Ile de la Cite worksite.
But one can also link the expression to the Hundred Years' War plus the Seven Years' War, giving 107 years in total.
Ages ago (belle lurette)
Belle lurette means “a very long time ago,” as in “They left ages ago” or “I have not seen him in ages.”
Many date its origin to 1877, while the Academy dictionary points to the 12th century.
Claude Duneton's Bouquet des expressions imagees says it comes from regional forms hure/hurette for “heure/heurette” (hour/little hour): belle heurette became bellurette in Burgundy.
The combination of beau and diminutive -ette works as an intensifier.
Ongoing research on
- At a good hour
- In eight days
- ...and others that may be sent to me
