Wednesday, June 09, 2010

A Song For Wednesday?

Let's see....is there a song for Wednesday? Hmm..."Wednesday, Wednesday?" Ah, nope; that's "Monday, Monday." How about "Wednesday Afternoon?" Nope, that's "Tuesday Afternoon." I can't come up with a song, off hand, but here's the history of our word "Wednesday:"

Wednesday literally means "Woden's day," and it was "Wodnesdaeg" in Old English. Woden was the main Germanic god of long ago, also known by variations in the other Germanic languages, such as "Odin/Odinn," in North Germanic, which has given Swedish, Norwegian and Danish "Onsdag," as a bit of a contracted form for Wednesday. Dutch has "Woensdag." German has "Wotan," but does not use the name for Wednesday, but rather uses "Mittwoch," which means "mid week," obviously close to the English words. The English form "Woden" seems to go back to Old Germanic "woth," which had the notion of "anger, mental excitement" and even "madness." This gave Old English "wod," later spelled "WOOD," but NOT related to the kind from trees. It is now archaic in English, but means "mad, extreme anger." In German it is "Wut," which has the same basic meaning, "rage, fury, extreme anger." So, I guess "Woden" was easily ticked off, something that seems to be associated with deities in the minds of many humans.

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