Every Single Week: Thursday. It's only the 4th day of the week if ...

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Every Single Week

“Your” week begins on whichever day you say it begins.

My week begins on Thursdays.

In preparation for my upcoming book “Every Single Week,” I’m looking into the meaning behind each day of the week. I thought I might have to wait until Monday (or Sunday) to begin. But no, Thursday is the beginning of my week. What’s the first day of your week?

If you’d rather take the week as it officially stands, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Thursday:

Thursday is the day of the week between Wednesday and Friday. According to the ISO 8601 international standard, it is the fourth day of the week.

Sure glad they reminded me that it’s between Wednesday and Friday!

Looking for more trivia?

The name is derived from Old English Þūnresdæg and Middle English Thuresday (with loss of -n-, first in northern dialects, from influence of Old Norse Þorsdagr) meaning “Thor’s Day”. It was named after the Norse god of Thunder, Thor. ^[1]^[2]^[3] Thunor, Donar (German, Donnerstag) and Thor are derived from the name of the Germanic god of thunder, Thunraz, equivalent to Jupiter in the interpretatio romana.

Estonians did not work on Thursdays (days of Thor) and Thursday nights were called “evenings of Tooru”. Some sources say Estonians used to gather in holy woods (Hiis) on Thursday evenings, where a bagpipe player sat on a stone and played while people danced and sang until the dawn.

In most Romance languages, the day is named after the Roman god Jupiter, who was the god of sky and thunder. In Latin, the day was known as Iovis Dies, “Jupiter’s Day”. In Latin, the genitive or possessive case of Jupiter was Iovis/Jovis and thus in most Romance languages it became the word for Thursday: Italian giovedì, Spanish jueves, French jeudi, Sardinian jòvia, Catalan dijous, Galician xoves and Romanian joi. This is also reflected in the p-Celtic Welsh dydd Iau.

I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a pretty great way to start my week:

” … on Thursday evenings, where a bagpipe player sat on a stone and played while people danced and sang until the dawn.”

For me, Thursday was the lead-in day to the weekend. Friday was part of the weekend, so Thursday was the beginning of that. If you were going on a weekend trip, you might even go crazy and leave on Thursday after school or work.

But today, as my weeks and weekends have smaller differences than they used to, Thursday is the beginning of the-time-formerly-known-as-weekend.

I’ve set my podcasts to release on Thursday.
Thursday is the last day to “Get Things Done” in case Friday is going to be … part of the weekend.
Thursday evening is often regarded as the “in” night to go out.

For me, it’s the end of the work week but the beginning of the weekend. It’s possible that, because I don’t work Monday through Friday in a 9-to-5 job, it matters less which days are which so I’m able to choose which days I want to serve which purposes.

For me, Thursday starts things off and anything I got started on Monday is done or in progress or shelved. Thursday is a good time to sprout new ideas and see if they last through the weekend.

What is Thursday for you?