I had always heard that Good Friday was etymologically God's Friday. However, other sources I've seen suggest that it was directly named Good Friday, with good here meaning holy. Any comments, elucidation?
Sorry to disappoint, but nobody's quite sure, and those who are quite sure are not quite right.
If nobody's quite sure how can you be sure that those who are quite sure aren't quite right?
They're not quite right, because no one's quite sure, silly. Not to mention which, the good padre left unsaid the "in the head" part on account of his good taste and decorum.
If you're quite sure you're a nobody, and everyone who's anyone is unsure.
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I had always heard that Good Friday was etymologically God's Friday. However, other sources I've seen suggest that it was directly named Good Friday, with good here meaning holy. Any comments, elucidation?
I often rely on Portuguese, the only other language I'm really fluent in, for matters such as these. The "good" in Portuguese for this day is santo/a, which yes, means holy. So I doubt "good" comes from "god."
> Portuguese for this day is santo/a, which yes, means holy. So I doubt "good" comes from "god."
Nothing apart from speculative comment, but surely a parallel for holy might be godly?
Today is Maundy Thursday ultimately from "mandatum novum" - a new commandment - in John 13:34 "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." at the "first" Last Supper.
One special service held today is Tenebrae, Latin for shadows or darkness.
We will most certainly observe Maundy Thursday today, with all of the appropriate attendant rites, but not Tenebrae, as it may be done on any day in Holy Week and, for us, was done yesterday at sunset.
Thank you for that explanation of "Maundy" Thursday! One of the things I've often wondered about but never bothered to look up.
The Portuguese is suggestive but not conclusive. What is Maundy Thursday called in Portuguese? I'm guessing that the Portuguese name for Easter itself is probably some variant on Pascha. English may as usual be going its own way.
I missed the Maundy Thursday service this year. We had a tropical rainstorm from about 4 to 8 pm. so I knew there was no way I was going to make it thorugh Jakarta traffic on time, when I was ready to leave at 6:30.
It started raining again during the Good Friday morning service. But for Easter we had absolutely glorious sunshine after a week of rainstorms.
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We will most certainly observe Maundy Thursday today, with all of the appropriate attendant rites,...
So you had some foot-washing and the Queen gave out coins (Maundy money)? 
> Portuguese name for Easter itself is probably some variant on Pascha
Wikipedia has a good entry on
Easter/Pesach/Pascha
Some background: there was in the middle ages a Portuguese pope (I suppose I could look him up) who decided the names of the weekdays were pagan (which they are). So he replaced Mon-Fri with segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira, quinta-feira, sexta-feira. The names are used today in Portugal and Brazil, and probably in the other colonies, too.That said, both the Thursday and the Friday of Holy Week are santa. And Easter, yes, is Páscoa.
The Indonesian word for Sunday (Minggu) comes from Portuguese. The Indonesian name for Monday (Senin) is local, the names for Tuesday to Saturday come from Arabic (Selasa, Rabu, Kamis, Jumat, Sabtu).
Minggu is also the word for week.
Maundy Thursday, BTW, is Kamis Putih (white Thursday).
Edited for clarity
Does this lead to ambiguity? If you say I will travel the first week in May can that be misconstrued to mean the first Monday in May?
Any language has the potential for ambiguity. Usually, if necessary, some form of redundancy is employed to resolve the ambiguity.
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Any language has the potential for ambiguity. Usually, if necessary, some form of redundancy is employed to resolve the ambiguity.
Is it redundant if it resolves ambiguity?
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E.g., PIN number.
Oh, I understood the point. It just got me wondering whether such a device really deserves to be called redundant if it is actually serving a useful purpose.
I guess it depends on how you define redundant. If the same information is presented more than once, it's redundant in my book.
I didn't know that redundant carried the connotation of uselessness. Duplication, yes, but not automatically useless...? That's pretty awful, given that you Brit-speakers say that someone who has been what we call laid off has been made redundant.
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I didn't know that redundant carried the connotation of uselessness. Duplication, yes, but not automatically useless...? That's pretty awful, given that you Brit-speakers say that someone who has been what we call laid off has been made redundant.
Well, here's what M-W, a USn dikshunry if I'm not mistaken, offers for "redundant":
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a : exceeding what is necessary or normal : SUPERFLUOUS b : characterized by or containing an excess; specifically : using more words than necessary c : characterized by similarity or repetition *a group of particularly redundant brick buildings* d chiefly British : no longer needed for a job and hence laid off
The definitions above are the ones that I'm familiar with, and all carry more than merely a sense of duplication. They all suggest an element of being unnecessary. Hence the employment sense - "we have 4 cleaners and need only three. One of you is redundant." It's really the same meaning as in the definitions listed before it, afaict.
Onelook has both the AHD and the compact OED also offering "more than is needed, superfluous" as among the primary meanings of "redundant".
To me, not needed does not equate to useless. Just my opinion.
EDIT: does not always equate to useless.
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To me, not needed does not equate to useless. Just my opinion.
EDIT: does not always equate to useless.
I'm sorry, you have me confused. I haven't said that "redundant" meant "useless". The definitions I quoted all say that "redundant" means "more than is necessary, superfluous". My original question was whether that is actually true of a linguistic redundancy if it serves a useful purpose, specfically, removing ambiguity. If "redundant" means "not necessary, superfluous", and if a word's presence serves to elminiate ambiguity, then it is in fact necessary, not superfluous. I am unable to fathom how the concept of "uselessness" got dragged into this.
Even in the occupational setting I gave as an example, saying that a person is redundant for a particular task doesn't mean that he or she is useless. I certainly never said or implied an equivalence between "redundant" and "useless", and so don't understand why it keeps coming up here.
I jumped to that conclusion from your saying It just got me wondering whether such a device really deserves to be called redundant if it is actually serving a useful purpose. If something is not actually serving a useful purpose, I thought you meant that it was useless. Sorry; apparently that was an incorrect assumption.
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I jumped to that conclusion from your saying It just got me wondering whether such a device really deserves to be called redundant if it is actually serving a useful purpose. If something is not actually serving a useful purpose, I thought you meant that it was useless. Sorry; apparently that was an incorrect assumption.
Indeed it was. It is very easy for something to be unnecessary without being useless.
And redundancy is important in language. Has something to do with information theory.
Interesting, Max. I'd always thought of "redundant" as meaning repetitious, not superfluous. Repetition, then, does not necessarily involve superfluity; so that, as you say, it is not necessarily redundant. Hmm.
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Does this lead to ambiguity? If you say I will travel the first week in May can that be misconstrued to mean the first Monday in May?
Where there is any fear of misinterpretation, hari (day) is added. So: minggu depan (next week) hari Minggu depan (or more colloquially besok hari Minggu) next Sunday.
Generally speaking it seems to cause less confusion than the perennial problems associated with the English word 'next' in time expressions.