Thursday is the fourth day of the week in most western countries and the fifth day of the week in the Judeo-Christian calendar, falling between
Wednesday and
Friday. In countries that adopt the
Sunday-first convention, it is considered the fifth day of the week. However, in
ISO 8601 it is the fourth day of the week. In
Slavic languages and in Chinese, this day's name is "fourth" (Polish
czwartek, Russian
четверг, pronounced CHET-vierg).
Portuguese, too, uses a number for this day:
quinta-feira, "fifth day", (see
Days of the week for more on the different conventions).
The contemporary name comes from the
Old English Şunresdæg (with loss of -n-, first in northern dialects, from influence of
Old Norse Şorsdagr), meaning "Day of
Thunor", this being a rough Germanic equivalent to the Latin
Iovis Dies, "Jupiter's Day". Most Germanic and Romance-speaking countries use their languages' equivalents:
German Donnerstag,
torsdag in
Scandinavia,
Italian giovedì,
Spanish jueves,
French jeudi,
Catalan dijous, and
Romanian joi. The
Hindi word for Thursday is
Guruvar, with
Guru being the
Sanskrit name for the planet Jupiter.
In Thailand, the color associated with Thursday is orange, see
Thai solar calendar.
Thursday in religion
In the
Hindu religion, Thursday is
Guruvaar, from
Guru, the
Sanskrit name for Jupiter, the largest of planets. Guruvaar fasting is very common in the various parts of north
India.
Quakers traditionally refer to Thursday as "Fifth Day" eschewing the
pagan origin of the name "Thursday". The name of the day is also called by words meaning "fifth day" in Icelandic, Modern Greek, Portuguese, and modern Semitic languages.
In the Christian tradition,
Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter — the day on which the Last Supper occurred.
Ascension Thursday is the day 40 days after
Easter, when Christ ascended into Heaven.
In the United States,
Thanksgiving Day is an annual festival celebrated on a Thursday in November, currently the fourth Thursday.
A religion (which is a joke version of
omphalism) known as
Last Thursdayism teaches that the world was created last Thursday, but with the appearance of age: people's memories, history books, fossils, light already on the way from distant stars, and so forth.
Thursday in the United Kingdom
In the
United Kingdom, all
general elections since 1935 have been held on a Thursday, and this has become a tradition, although not a requirement of the law — which only states that an election may be held on any day
"except Saturdays, Sundays, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, bank holidays in any part of the United Kingdom and any day appointed for public thanksgiving and mourning". An explanation sometimes given for the choice of Thursday as polling day is that it was, in most towns, the traditional market day, although it has also been observed that the choice has practical advantages — with the outcome of the election being known by Friday, the new or continuing administration then has the weekend to organise itself in preparation for the "government shop opening for business" on Monday, the first day of the new week following the election.
Additionally, local elections are usually held on the first Thursday in May.
The Thursday before Easter is also known as
Maundy Thursday or
Sheer Thursday in the United Kingdom, traditionally a day of cleaning and giving out
Maundy money.
Note
In Latin the Genitive or possessive case of Jupiter was
Jovis and as such in most Romance languages with the exception of Portuguese it became the word for Thursday: Latin
Jovis Dies, Spanish
Jueves, Italian
Giovedi, and Rumanian
Jiuvidi.
Astrological and Astronomical sign
The
astrological and
astronomical sign of the planet
Jupiter (

) represents Thursday with similar names in Latin-derived languages, such as the
French Jeudi. In English, this became "Thor's Day," since the Roman god
Jupiter was identified with Thor in
northern Europe.
Thursday in popular culture
In the
nursery rhyme, "
Thursday's Child has far to go".
Gabriel Syme, the main character was given the title of Thursday in
G. K. Chesterton's novel "
The Man Who Was Thursday."
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. Appropriately, in
The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, one of the characters says to Thor:
"I'm not used to spending the evening with someone who's got a whole day named after them".
In the
cross media work
Thursday's fictions by
Richard James Allen and
Karen Pearlman, Thursday is the title character, a woman who tries to cheat the cycle of
reincarnation to get a form of
eternal life.
Thursday's Fictions which has been a stage production, a book, a film and an 3D online immersive world in
Second Life.
[1]
Thursday is sometimes referred to as "Friday Eve" in anticipation for the end of the work week on Friday.
Thursday is a post-hardcore band from New Brunswick, New Jersey, formed in 1997.
Thursday's Child is a David Bowie song from the album
hours...(1999).
Thursday's Child is also a song by
The Chameleons in Script of the Bridge (1983).
In
Neil Gaiman's
American Gods, when Wednesday introduces himself, he remarks that given the weather (he and the main character are flying in a thunderstorm), it could be Thursday, as Thor was the god of thunder.
Outlook for Thursday was a hit in
New Zealand for
Dave Dobbyn.
"Thursday" is the name of an episode of
Strange Days at Blake Holsey High. In the episode
Corrine Baxter finds herself trapped in the same day over and over again, similar to the premise of the
film Groundhog Day.
"Thursday Next" is the central character in a series of novels by
Jasper Fforde.
In
high schools in the
United States during the
1960s, it was widely believed that if someone wore
green on Thursdays, it meant that they were
gay.
[2]
"Thursday" is an NPC in the online game Dragonfable.
In "
Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella),"
Truman Capote writes of Holly Golightly: "'
Thursday.' She stood up. 'My God,' she said, and sat down again with a moan. 'It's too gruesome.'"
Thursday is the day of the Second Round draw in the English League Cup.
BBC TWO's new comedy zone is named "THURSDAYS ARE FUNNY".
Named days
References
1.
^ [1]
2.
^ Grahn, Judy
Another Mother Tongue New York:1990--Beacon Press: This book discusses the origins of this curious belief.
External links
Wednesday is the third day of the week in most western countries and the fourth day of the week in the Judeo-Christian calendar, between Tuesday and Thursday. The name comes from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English Wēdnes dæg
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Friday (pronunciation IPA: /ˈfraɪdeɪ, ˈfraɪdi/) is the day of the week falling between Thursday and Saturday. It is the sixth day in countries that adopt a Sunday-first convention.
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Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of
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days of the week in various world languages can be classified as either planetary or numerical, both of which may have the names of one or more days changed due to religious or secular reasons.
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- THOR (Tracing Habitability, Organics, and Resources) is a proposal by researchers at Arizona State University to drop a copper ball from orbit onto the surface of Mars in order to study the composition of the first few meters of the surface. http://www.newscientistspace.
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French (français, pronounced [fʁɑ̃ˈsɛ]) is a Romance language originally spoken in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, and today by about 300 million people around the world as either
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Official language of: Moldova [2]
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Writing system: Devanagari script
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Official language of: India
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Thai solar calendar, Suriyakati (Thai: สุริยคติ), has been the official and prevalent calendar in Thailand since it was adopted by King Chulalongkorn in 1888, although the Western calendar year is sometimes used in business,
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Hindu ( pronunciation (help info ) , Devanagari: हिन्दु), as per modern definition, is an adherent of the philosophies and scriptures of Hinduism, and the
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In Hindi, or the Gujarati language (ગુજરાતી), the term for Thursday, the fourth day of the week.[1] Intriguingly, just like with Thursday in English this word also refers to the fifth planet from the sun, Jupiter (Jupiter is the fifth
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Sanskrit}}} | style="padding-left: 0.5em;" | Writing system: | colspan="2" style="padding-left: 0.5em;" | Devanāgarī and several other Brāhmī-based scripts ! colspan="3" style="text-align: center; color: black; background-color: lawngreen;"|Official
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Religious Society of Friends, whose members are commonly known as Quakers was founded in England in the 17th century as a Christian religious denomination by people who were dissatisfied with the existing denominations and sects of Christianity.
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Paganism (from Latin paganus, meaning "an old country dweller, rustic") is a term which, from a Western perspective, has come to connote a broad set of spiritual or cultic practices or beliefs of any folk religion, and of historical and contemporary polytheistic religions
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Maundy Thursday — also called Holy Thursday and, in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, Great Thursday — is the feast or holy day on the Thursday before Easter that commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles.
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Generally, an ascension is the act of ascending, usually to a significantly higher personal state, as the ascension of a monarch to the throne.
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Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is an annual one-day holiday to give thanks, traditionally to God, for the things one has at the end of the harvest season. In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.
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The omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book, Creation (Omphalos) by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains
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Last Thursdayism (sometimes Last Tuesdayism or Last Wednesdayism) is a version of omphalism, and of Bertrand Russell's Five minute hypothesis. It is the idea that the world was created last Thursday, but with the appearance of age: people's memories, history books, fossils, light
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