{"id":23173,"date":"2023-11-21T17:20:31","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T17:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23173"},"modified":"2023-11-21T17:20:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T17:20:32","slug":"saturns-bathing-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23173","title":{"rendered":"Saturn’s Bathing Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

The English word Saturday<\/strong> comes ultimately from the Proto-West Germanic *S\u0101turnas dag<\/em> (Saturn\u2019s day), which is a calque (translation) of the Latin di\u0113s Saturn\u012b<\/em> (day of Saturn).<\/p>\n

\"Saturday\"<\/p>\n

There are similar words in other West Germanic languages, such as West Frisian (saterdei<\/strong>), Low German (Saterdag<\/strong>), and Dutch (zaterdag<\/strong>), all of which mean Saturday [source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n

There German word for Saturday, Samstag<\/strong>, comes from Middle High German sam(e)ztac<\/em>, from Old High German sambaztag<\/em> (Sabbath day), from Gothic *\ud800\udf43\ud800\udf30\ud800\udf3c\ud800\udf31\ud800\udf30\ud800\udf44\ud800\udf49<\/em> (*sambat\u014d), a version \ud800\udf43\ud800\udf30\ud800\udf31\ud800\udf31\ud800\udf30\ud800\udf44\ud800\udf49<\/em> (sabbat\u014d – Saturday, the Sabbath day), from Koine Greek \u03c3\u03ac\u03b2\u03b2\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd<\/em> (s\u00e1bbaton – Sabbath), from Hebrew \u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05d1\u05b8\u05bc\u05ea\u200e (\u0161abb\u0101\u1e6f – Sabbath), possibly from Akkadian \ud808\udead\ud808\ude7a\ud808\udc1c\ud808\udf08 (\u0161apattum – the middle day of the lunar month). <\/p>\n

Words from the same roots include samedi<\/strong> (Saturday) in French, s\u00e2mb\u0103t\u0103<\/strong> (Saturday) in Romanian, and szombat<\/strong> (Saturday, Sabbath) in Hungarian [source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n

In northern and eastern Germany, another word for Saturday is Sonnabend<\/strong> (\u201cSunday eve\u201d), as apparently in Germanic recking, the day begins at sunset. It a calque of the Old English sunnan\u01e3fen <\/em> (Saturday evening) [source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n

Words for Saturday in the North Germanic languages have a different root, however. These include l\u00f6rdag<\/strong> in Swedish, l\u00f8rdag<\/strong> in Danish and Norwegian, leygardagur<\/strong> in Faroese and laugardagur<\/strong> in Icelandic. They all come from the Old Norse laugardagr<\/em>, from laug<\/em> (pool) and dagr<\/em> (day), so literally \u201cbathing day\u201d [source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n

These words have also been borrowed into Finnic languages: Saturday is lauantai<\/strong> in Finnish, laup\u00e4ev<\/strong> in Estonian and lavvantaki<\/strong> in Ingrian.<\/p>\n

Are there any other languages in which Saturday means something like \u201cbathing day\u201d, or something else interesting?<\/p>\n

See also: Days of the week in many languages<\/a> on Omniglot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The English word Saturday comes ultimately from the Proto-West Germanic *S\u0101turnas dag (Saturn\u2019s day), which is a calque (translation) of the Latin di\u0113s Saturn\u012b (day of Saturn). There are similar words in other West Germanic languages, such as West Frisian (saterdei), Low German (Saterdag), and Dutch (zaterdag), all of which mean Saturday [source]. There German […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,100,102,104,106,107,108,109,111,116,153,123,124,10,31,33,178,36,202,51,67,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancient-greek-","category-danish","category-dutch","category-english","category-estonian","category-etymology","category-faroese","category-finnish","category-french","category-german","category-gothic-gutiska","category-hungarian","category-icelandic","category-language","category-norwegian","category-old-english-aenglisc","category-old-high-german","category-old-norse","category-proto-west-germanic","category-romanian","category-swedish","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23173"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23183,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23173\/revisions\/23183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}