Thursday


You guys ever wonder how the names came about for the days of the week? As a little break, I took and wondered off to outer space and this question bothered me for a couple of minutes. For example, the meaning of the first part of “Thursday”. That is, “thurs”. What is it? What does it mean? Here are some definitions I have found from the biggest, centralized knowledge-base in the world (aka. the internet):

  • Thursday is the day of the week between Wednesday and Friday.
  • The name Thursday comes from the Old English Þunresdæg, meaning the day of Þunor, commonly known in Modern English as Thor.
  • Some have adopted an acronym for Thursday, similar to Friday’s T.G.I.F., to say “So Happy It’s Thursday,” or S.H.I.T.
  • In the popular rhyme, “Thursday’s Child has far to go”.
  • In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the character Arthur Dent says “This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays”. A few minutes later the planet Earth is destroyed. Thor, for whom the day was named, also appears later in the Hitchhiker’s series and in other Adams books.
  • In the Hindu religion, Thursday is guruvar or the Guru’s day.
  • Quakers traditionally refer to Thursday as “Fifth Day” eschewing the “pagan” origin of the name “Thursday”.

Interesting aye? Well check this out… in terms of history, here’s one for the record books:

Black Thursday refers to October 24, 1929 when stock prices in the NYSE fall sharply, with record volume of nearly 13 million shares. Five days later, the market crashed on volume of over 16 million shares – a level not to be surpassed for 39 years. In popular imagery, the crash has come to mark the beginning of the Great Depression.

“How about in terms of the Bible?”, you might ask. Well, here it is:

There are two holidays that traditionally fall on Thursday. One is Maundy Thursday. It is the Thursday upon the eve of Good Friday. Biblical accounts have it that the “Last Supper” was on a Thursday, and it was at this meal that Christ gave the “mandate” to his disciples to “love one another”. The word Maundy is a corruption of the Latin word “mandate”.

Meanwhile, here’s one Thursday that most people in the US look forward to every year:

One of the most popular holidays in the United States is Thanksgiving. It always falls on the fourth Thursday in November.

Very interesting to find all of this stuff. I guess thats why people don’t like Hump-day (aka. Wednesday) that much. But once they are over it, they feel [like] S.H.I.T. =P