Q: How did the expression “canine days” change from which means the most popular time of the 12 months to a interval of sluggishness or stagnation?

A: When “canine days” first appeared in English within the sixteenth century, it referred to the most popular a part of summer time within the Northern hemisphere, a interval as soon as thought-about unhealthy and evil.

Due to the lethargy brought on by the warmth or fears of malignant influences, the time period got here to imply a interval of stagnation and inactivity. Right here’s the story.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “canine days” as “the most popular a part of the summer time, related in historical instances with the heliacal rising of the Canine Star within the Mediterranean space, and previously thought-about to be essentially the most unhealthy interval of the 12 months and a time of in poor health omen.”

The expression has its roots in Greek mythology, the place Sirius is the identify of the hunter Orion’s canine. Within the Iliad (E-book XXII), Homer refers back to the star as κύν᾽ Ὠρίωνος (kun Orionos, Orion’s canine).

English borrowed the phrase from the post-classical Latin caniculares dies (canine days), which was borrowed in flip from the Hellenistic Greek κυνάδες ἡμέραι (kunades hemerai, canine days).

When the phrase first appeared in English the sixteenth century, it referred to the most popular days of summer time. The earliest OED instance, which we’ve expanded, is from The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght (1538):

“Canicula, a lyttell dogge or bytche. Additionally a sterre, wherof canicular or dogge days be named Dies caniculares.”

The dictionary says the phrase quickly took on the figurative sense of “an evil time; a interval during which malignant influences prevail.” The earliest quotation for this sense is from a letter by a Protestant clergyman (and later martyr) to a fellow inmate at Newgate Jail in London:

“Neither that any giddy head in these dog-days would possibly take an ensample [example] by you to dissent from Christ’s true church” (from a 1555 letter by John Philpot in The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot, 1842, edited by Robert Eden).

The OED says the evil figurative utilization is seen “now (in weakened sense): a interval of inactivity or decline.”

It’s not unusual for the sense of a utilization to strengthen or weaken over time, as we observe in a 2021 publish. A linguist would possibly check with weakening as “semantic loss” or “semantic discount.”

It’s unclear when the weakened sense of “canine days” first appeared in English, although this Oxford quotation could also be an early sighting or a maybe a sign of issues to return:

“What then shall wee now count on in these dogge-dayes of the worlds declining age?” (Achitophel; or, the Image of a Depraved Politician, 1629, three sermons by the thinker and Anglican clergyman Nathanael Carpenter).

The dictionary’s first clear instance of the weakened sense, which we’ve expanded, is from a July 12, 1992, article in The New York Instances about mid-level bosses being laid off in troubled financial instances:

“One probably helpful byproduct of the managerial canine days could also be that it’ll put together youthful folks for the job- and career-jumping more likely to be their lot.”

And right here’s the OED’s most up-to-date instance: “Within the dog-days of The Beatles, certainly one of Paul’s plans for holding all of it collectively had been for the world’s most fabled band to simply exit and play” (“The Beatles: Stoned, sloppy—shelved!” Mojo, February 2002).

Oxford notes that “the canine days have been variously reckoned, as relying on both the Better Canine Star (Sirius) or the Lesser Canine Star (Procyon), and on both the heliacal rising or the cosmical rising (which happens at an earlier date).”

The heliacal rising of a star happens when it first turns into seen above the japanese horizon at daybreak simply earlier than dawn. The cosmical rising happens when it rises within the morning concurrently the solar.

“The timing of those risings is determined by latitude, and they don’t happen in any respect in most of southern hemisphere,” the OED says, including that “very totally different dates have been assigned for the canine days,” with their starting “starting from 3 July to fifteen August, and their length various from 30 to 61 days.”

Within the Calendar of the 1552 E-book of Frequent Prayer, the canine days run from July 7 to Sept. 5. In present calendars, Oxford says, “they’re usually stated to start on 3 July and finish on 11 August (i.e. the 40 days previous the cosmical rising of Sirius on the latitude of Greenwich).”

The dictionary says the utilization “arose from the pernicious qualities of the season being attributed to the ‘affect’ of the Canine Star; but it surely has lengthy been popularly related to the assumption that at this season canines are most liable to go mad.”

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