#12174
12/07/2000 12:18 AM
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I discovered to my amazement some years ago that a Canadian guy working here in Australia just stared at me blankly when I said a particular task would "take a fortnight to complete". It would thus seem the term (which refers to a two week period) ISN'T in use throughout the English speaking world.
Please let me know where you are in the world and whether "fortnight" is in common usage there.
I was particularly surprised that it was a North American that hadn't heard the word. One only has to think of a military fort and one automatically thinks of North America.
In comparison to the multitude of forts in the USA and Canada, there have only been a couple of well-known forts in Australia - Fort Denison (in Sinny Arba, right in frunna the Oprowse) in particular. Could it be that our paltry few have contributed this term to Australian English??
(I'm guessing that a "fortnight" referred initially to a two-week tour of duty?)
stales
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#12175
12/07/2000 12:58 AM
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Hi stales,
Nothing to do with forts, I'm afraid. It's a contraction of "fourteen nights". Merriam-Webster's online dictionary gives this:
Main Entry: fort·night
Pronunciation: 'fOrt-"nIt, 'fort-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English fourtenight, alteration of fourtene night, from Old English fEowertyne niht fourteen nights
Date: before 12th century
: a period of 14 days : two weeks
At least one other dictionary has it as "British and Australian". I know from previous discussions on the board that our Kiwi mates also use it. Try using the Search function for the word 'fortnight' (ignoring the thread "Challenge of the Fortnight"). You might like to also search for the much rarer 'sennight' (= seven days, a week) which old (cool) hand tsuwm cast before a stunned readership way back when.
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#12176
12/07/2000 3:23 AM
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Marty replied: At least one other dictionary has it as "British and Australian". I know from previous discussions on the board that our Kiwi mates also use it. Try using the Search function for the word 'fortnight' (ignoring the thread "Challenge of the Fortnight"). You might like to also search for the much rarer 'sennight' (= seven days, a week) which old (cool) hand tsuwm cast before a stunned readership way back when.
Marty has it dead right. "Se'ennight' was a term used in a diary by an Otago gold miner in the 1860s, Alphonse Barrington. He used it to describe how long he was stuck in a tent under snow in a particularly inhospitable (and goldless) piece of Godzone. Apart from that I've only seen it used by the authors of historical novels like Georgette Heyer and Susan Howarth. It was (apparently) in use in Britain by the "upper crust" during the early part of the 19th Century (NO, I'M NOT GOING DOWN THAT ROUTE AGAIN!).
Fortnight is just a contraction of "fourteen nights". Your dictionary is probably right about its roots.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12177
12/07/2000 12:15 PM
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veteran
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forntnight...Se'ennight
Yep, we definitely use "fortnight" here amongst the dark satanic mills. Never ever heard even a reference to se'ennight(s) though. Why not just say "week"?
I suppose you can have 5 or 6 day working weeks. Is that relevant?
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#12178
12/07/2000 1:36 PM
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curious-- i just heard fortnight on TV new this week-- a national broadcast--I thought it strange– its not that most of don't know the meaning of the word–wait let me back track many might be closer. But its never used.
just as we know what you are talking about when you say lift or lorry, but we take our elevators and truck stuff about .
the only time I have seen sennight is in Patterns by Amy Lowell– and I had to look it up! Aside from there, the dictionary I looked it up, I have never seen it in print, anywhere else.
what I like about fortnight and suspect it hold true for sennight, is it can be a fortnight Wednesday–say from December 6 to December 20. Where as a week starts with Sunday. So sennight is seven days–but a week is from Sunday to Sunday? Does that make sense? (Or is it just my personal interpretation?)
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#12179
12/07/2000 2:14 PM
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As a life long born here Merkin I have heard the term fortnight, mostly in the phrase "furlongs per fortnight" which is, I believe, meant to indicate that, although the speaker recognizes that units of measure are arbitrary, some just make more sense than others.
N.B. I have never actually heard anything truly being measured in furlongs per fortnight.
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#12180
12/07/2000 2:36 PM
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never actually heard anything truly being measured in furlongs per fortnightFunny how you can just know when someone has never walked behind a horse drawn plough... 
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#12181
12/07/2000 3:04 PM
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In reply to:
Funny how you can just know when someone has never walked behind a horse drawn plough
Not only am I a full-blooded Merkin but a city boy, to boot. If memory serves, most of the time I have heard the unit furlongs per fortnight used it has been used in reference to the speed of light. There are large pockets of horse drawn plows(sic) not far from where I live these days.
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#12182
12/07/2000 3:40 PM
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just a couple of quick comments... sennight - "why not just say "week"?" fortnight - why not just say "two weeks"? (same number of key strokes, same number of sylLAbles) Merkin - http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/merkin.htm (submitted without comment)
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#12183
12/07/2000 4:20 PM
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Merkin - http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/merkin.htm (submitted without comment)
I never knew!
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#12184
12/07/2000 4:41 PM
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>>>So sennight is seven days-but a week is from Sunday to Sunday?<<<
Helen,
I would use week in both of your examples. I would say that something will occur in a week, or a week from today, meaning in 7 days, or next Thursday. I might also say that something will occur next week, meaning sometime in the period that will start Sunday and end the following Saturday. I might also mean the period starting Monday and ending Friday, but in that case it would be obvious that I mean business days from the context.
I agree that most Americans probably know that fortnight means 2 weeks (or they at least understand that it means something between a week and a month), but I can't think of a single time that someone has used fortnight in casual conversation with me.
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#12185
12/07/2000 5:43 PM
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FishonaBike mused Yep, we definitely use "fortnight" here amongst the dark satanic mills. Never ever heard even a reference to se'ennight(s) though. Why not just say "week"?
I suppose you can have 5 or 6 day working weeks. Is that relevant?
You're assuming that the use of both fortnight and sennight were "designed". Like all such terms, my bet is that they just grew into usage. Fortnight just means "any fourteen-day period but let's not be either too exact about the number of days or assume that it begins on any particular day". Sennight was probably used in the same context. I assume its use died out when "week" - one syllable shorter - became more popular.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12186
12/07/2000 7:03 PM
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#12187
12/07/2000 9:11 PM
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old hand
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fortnight - why not just say "two weeks"? (same number of key strokes, same number of sylLAbles)
Actually, when using one of these terms in conversation one would need to say "a fortnight" as opposed to "two weeks", which doesn't require an article, therefore making it one syllable shorter.
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#12188
12/07/2000 9:31 PM
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>Where as a week starts with Sunday. So sennight is seven days–but a week is from Sunday to Sunday?
Helen,
I agree in general with xara's response to your post, except for the bit about "next week" meaning Sunday to Saturday, similar to your definition above.
I am surprised that anyone still thinks about Sunday as being the start of the week - I thought it was an antiquated thing, presumably springing from the Christian religion and the importance of going to church on that day. For me, Monday is clearly the start of a new week. Sunday can't possibly be, as it is part of the "weekend".
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#12189
12/07/2000 9:49 PM
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Marty,
It all has to do with calendars. On 99% (if not more) of our calendars the first day of the week is printed up as Sunday. You really cannot use the weekend argument though since things can have two ends – a front-end and a back-end. You never, for example, say a piece of string has a beginning and an end, just two ends.
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#12190
12/07/2000 10:30 PM
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In reply to:
It all has to do with calendars. On 99% (if not more) of our calendars the first day of the week is printed up as Sunday. You really cannot use the weekend argument though since things can have two ends – a front-end and a back-end. You never, for example, say a piece of string has a beginning and an end, just two ends.
bel,
You probably wrote that tongue-in-cheek, but I'll bite anyway.
You can't extrapolate the concept of ends from objects to time. Surely you wouldn't say that January was at the end of the year (or one of the two ends), or that the first is an/the end of the month, or dawn is an/the end of the day!
Oh, and I haven't used a calendar for years. Is there still a market for them?
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#12191
12/08/2000 11:31 AM
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to do with calendars...
Agree, Marty. Besides, in business diaries of most kinds, surely the two (Western) weekend days are frequently marked as minor spaces, with the week perforce starting on Monday?
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#12192
12/08/2000 12:56 PM
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In reply to:
On 99% (if not more) of our calendars the first day of the week is printed up as Sunday.
This is certainly true on almost all of the wall calendars here in the USA that show a month at a time. Frequently business oriented one day per sheet calendars will lump Saturday and Sunday together on one sheet but they show no preference whatsoever for start, end or any specific time during the week unless they have day names in German (Wednesday is Mitwoch, mid-week). When I was in Russia several many years back in January I picked up a calendar in Russian. They have Monday as the first day of the week and I found the calendar almost impossible to use because of that. I still think of Monday as the beginning of the week. Is this a contradiction?
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#12193
12/08/2000 5:04 PM
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member
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>>>I am surprised that anyone still thinks about Sunday as being the start of the week<<<
Certainly it has quite a bit to do with the calendar. Sunday is always the first day, unless, as mentioned, the calendar lumps the 'weekend' into one section. Sunday being the start and Saturday the end appeals to me for another reason as well. Wednesday is the middle of the week. If Sunday were last then the week would be very unbalanced.
In addition, in every job I've ever had, the pay period either ended on Friday or Saturday. My most recent job ended its pay period on Saturday, so the week definitely began on Sunday. In previous jobs where the pay period ended on Friday, one could say that the week began on Saturday.
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#12194
12/08/2000 9:22 PM
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old hand
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Maybe this is just because I'm still in school, I doubt it, but I've always thought of Monday-Friday and Saturday-Sunday as two different sections of the week. That's probably why one is called the week and the other the weekend. Friday for me always feels like the end of the week and the weekend is somewhat of a latent period until the beginning of a new week on Monday. Not that I don't do anything on the weekend, but it's a different routine.
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#12195
12/10/2000 9:14 AM
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newbie
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Fortnight is not in common use in my part of Canada, although it is not unknown. It's probably heard more on the west coast where brits are concentrated (guaranteed fortnight after fortnight of steady rain there).
Carpe whatever
Carpe whatever
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#12196
12/10/2000 9:39 AM
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Solrep hedged: Carpe whatever
Well, for this post perhaps it should have been:
carpe dies quatuordecim (Latin for "fortnight" ....)
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12197
12/11/2000 12:06 PM
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old hand
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A thing that always struck me as funny is the French expression corresponding to "a fortnight", namely quinze jours, literally, 15 days. There is also une quinzaine but no quatorzaine.
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#12198
12/11/2000 6:12 PM
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wsieber noted: French expression corresponding to "a fortnight", namely quinze jours, literally, 15 days
... and just when have the French conformed on any other topic? They were probably just miffed that everyone had stolen the idea of fourteen days = fortnight.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12199
12/11/2000 7:08 PM
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... and just when have the French conformed on any other topic? Very true – le President will be marching in step, even if the rest of NATO is somehow not hearing the same drum  But the new version of the official dictionary, just issued and yours for FF450, does at least now accept hamburgers , jogging , le flash-back , le jackpot , and les girls as legally permissible parts of the recognised French language. And this is no joke – the country that, after all, gave the English-speaking world the phrase bureaucracy , has a ‘police’ based within the Ministry of Culture. This force uses the dictionary to attempt to enforce France’s strict laws against the use of foreign terms within schools, all official documentation, advertising and public notices. The difference such a narrowly prescriptive methodology makes is quite illuminating. New termes argotiques only just admitted to official recognition include such incandescent buzz words as ‘dope’ and ‘joint’! Is this not reminiscent of King Canute getting his feet wet (even if 40 years after the tide rolled in)?  The history and rationale (sounds like a good French word) of the French Academy’s approach is roughly this: “Au secours: la défense de la langue française! Jugeant que la concurrence de l’anglais, même dans la vie courante, représentait une réelle menace pour le français et que les importations anglo-américaines dans notre lexique devenaient trop massives, les autorités gouvernementales ont été amenées, depuis une trentaine d’années, à compléter le dispositif traditionnel de régulation de la langue. À partir de 1972, des commissions ministérielles de terminologie et de néologie sont constituées. Elles s’emploient à indiquer, parfois même à créer, les termes français qu’il convient d’employer pour éviter tel ou tel mot étranger, ou encore pour désigner une nouvelle notion ou un nouvel objet encore innommés. Ces termes s’imposent alors à l’administration. On ne dit plus tie-break mais jeu décisif, baladeur remplace walkman, logiciel se substitue à software, etc….” If you want to see more, chercher la toile, mes amis! http://www.academie-francaise.fr/dictionnaire/index.html
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#12200
12/11/2000 10:39 PM
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In reply to:
Is this not reminiscent of King Canute getting his feet wet?
Has anybody else ever read the following favourable interpretation of Knut's actions? I read somewhere that the whole trip to the seaside was in order to teach his sycophantic courtiers a lesson - stop sucking up so hard, I am but a man, that sort of thing.
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#12201
12/11/2000 11:10 PM
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Mav said, inter alia: And this is no joke – the country that, after all, gave the English-speaking world the phrase bureaucracy , has a ‘police’ based within the Ministry of Culture.
ah...l'academie francaise (hope the spelling is right). I remember hearing a Frenchman with a good sense of humour and grasp of English pillorying them and their attempts to enforce linguistic "purity". He was at pains to point out that if you removed all the foreign influences from the language, not only would there be no language, but there wouldn't even be anything to drink!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12202
12/12/2000 1:00 PM
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the very first time i heard of king canute was when a scholar was debunking the common myth, and explaining the that canute was wise and etc.., It was on TV, definately, i think a BBC show that was re-broadcast here... maybe the story of english thing they did? it was well over 10 years ago.
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#12203
12/12/2000 1:16 PM
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Has anybody else ever read the following favourable interpretation of Knut's actions? ...the whole trip to
the seaside was in order to teach his sycophantic courtiers a lesson - stop sucking up so hard...
The way I got it stuck in my tiny little brain is that that is just what we learned in primary school. But then I remember getting shot down by a teacher for claiming that a kookaburra was a bird!
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#12204
12/12/2000 2:33 PM
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Yes, I've heard this debunking as well. Doesn't really affect the image for me, though - it's still that of a man getting his feet wetted by a greater force (whatever his apparent motivation!)
Rhubarb, I know this is not your period - but can you help?
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#12205
12/12/2000 3:26 PM
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As far as I am aware:
1. King Knut was defintiely one of the better. His mal-reputation is primarily a nationalistic thingy because of his not being 'native' English (whatever that is).
2. The original, and full, form of the story is that his courtiers told him he was so powerful even the elements obeyed him, and he, wiser than they, proved that this was not the case, by setting his throne by the shoreline and commanding the tide not to wet his feet. But it did. One in the eye for the sycophants.
3. The story is almost definitely apocryphal, somewhat like Alfred and the cakes.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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#12206
12/12/2000 4:14 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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In reply to:
Yes, I've heard this debunking as well. Doesn't really affect the image for me, though - it's still that of a man getting his feet wetted by a greater force (whatever his apparent motivation!)
Rhubarb, I know this is not your period - but can you help?
Yes, sure - I'll jump back a thousand years from the time I virtually live in to help a friend.
The story is well documented, of KC using the implacability of the incoming tide to show his courtiers that he was but a man - if a dam' good one - and a Dane. He was not a God, but a servant of the God (or Gods - there was still afair amount of pantheism floating around in those days.) Just where it is documented, I'm not sure. Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, perhaps?
However, shanks may well be right about the apocryphal nature of the story.
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#12207
12/12/2000 6:54 PM
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KC using the implacability of the incoming tide “That’s the way, uh, huh, uh, huh, I like it, I like it..” Thanks, Rhu.
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#12208
12/12/2000 7:04 PM
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However, shanks may well be right about the apocryphal nature of the story.
I was always taught the story with that caveat, in fact I was taught to assume that it was apocryphal.
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#12209
12/12/2000 11:47 PM
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sputter, sputter, gag, gag...and me not having time to read all the posts in the last two days...this is one I really would have liked to get to.
You are right CapK. I have never, understood the quinze jours description of a fortnight. It is usually said by someone going on vacation/holiday and is vraiment stupide. I am glad it is going out of style here.
As to l'Académie Française. Good grief, they should come over here to learn a thing or two about keeping your language intact. Our government has often INVENTED words to keep from using an English one. The most notable being the translation of hamburger as hambourgeois. It meant absolutely nothing and is disregarded by EVERYONE - even the fanatical French separatists. The only time you ever see this term on a menu is right after the Language Police (yes we really do have those) have passed and threatened a restaurateur. The owner complies on one menu and changes it back on future printings.
There are scads of examples like this and it only ridicules their motives, which are basically not bad. There is even a hotline set up by the government to give the ‘accepted’ names for everything. Argh – it drives me plain crazy!!!!!
Deep breaths, deep breaths, calming down, deep breaths. Sorry folks. It just annoys the piss right outta me.
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#12210
12/13/2000 1:19 AM
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bel blared: There are scads of examples like this and it only ridicules their motives, which are basically not bad. There is even a hotline set up by the government to give the ‘accepted’ names for everything. Argh – it drives me plain crazy!!!!!
Bel, I sympathise, I really do. In the interests of political and cultural correctness, there was an effort in New Zealand a few years ago to change the place names given by us colonial types back to the original names used by the Maori (who, I'm sure, my colleague Max will refer to as tangata whenua).
I don't know so much about other areas, but I come from Otago (Otakou in Maori). Otakou is also the name of a town on the Otago Peninsula. LINZ (or whoever) came up with lists of Maori-equivalent names and printed them on maps and published them and used all sorts of approaches to gain acceptance.
However, even the local tribe, the Ngai Tahu, most of whom are as white as I am through 1.5 centuries of intermarriage, failed to use them. So there we are, two names for lots of places, but only the existing one being used ...
Things move on. Turning the clock back never really works.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#12211
12/13/2000 10:21 AM
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Pooh-Bah
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in fact I was taught to assume that it was apocryphal.
Personally, Max, I treat all history as apocryphal, and shall continue to do so until I am able to purchase Dr Who's Tardis. (Iwonder if I'll have to enable the cookies on that as well - a scary prospect if I use it to check on King Alf - epecially if I find that the story isn't apocryphal.) 
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#12212
12/13/2000 10:30 AM
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Pooh-Bah
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I have never, understood the quinze jours description of a fortnight. It is usually said by someone going on vacation/holiday and is vraiment stupide.
Sacre bleu! Ce n'est pas stupide, tout alors.
Consider.
A fortnight is fourteen nights, yes?
A night stretches, more or less, from sunset to dawn (or from when you go to bed 'til the time you get up - a slightly more dodgy proposition for this argument)
Normally speaking, therefore, night starts on one day and ends on the morrow.
Therefore there are fifteen DAYS involved.
Hence quinze JOURS.
Q.E.D.
Whatever else, the French are inexorably logical.
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#12213
12/13/2000 11:23 AM
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
French are inexorably logicalTrue. They figured "keep out the British mad cow disease, and feed our own cattle on the same shite..."
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