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Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2025 7:38 pm
on the word’s origin in different languages. I have seen this pattern in Wikipedia. Then, history: “In Ancient Rome, daylight hours were divided into 12 hours, grouped into four parts of three hours each; the afternoon was considered the third quarter of the daylight period, covering the time from noon to the end of the ‘ninth hour of the day.’ This division lost its significance only in the late Middle Ages when the fixed division of the day into 24 hours of equal duration prevailed.” There is also “after midnight” – “a stable linguistic form referring to the time of day following twelve o’clock midnight and preceding dawn or pre-dawn twilight (conventionally ending around 4 AM). In Ancient Rome, the dark hours of the day were divided into 12 hours, grouped into four parts of three hours each, the so-called ‘watches’; the post-midnight period was considered the third quarter of the night, covering the time from midnight to the end of the ‘ninth hour of the night.’ This division lost its significance only in the late Middle Ages when the fixed division of the day into 24 hours of equal duration prevailed.”
Now, after I have quickly but in the correct sequence demonstrated this path in my book – showing the initial layer, which is brief and surface-level yet structured with understanding – I will later return to this as another layer. But for now, this layer is an introduction. After presenting what Wikipedia states about daily time, the day, and all these time segments, the next thing to examine is what a week is. Wikipedia states: “A week (in the ecclesiastical-liturgical practice of the Russian Church – sedmitsa) is a period of time lasting seven days. A week is an interval of time lasting seven days. A calendar week is a seven-day period beginning on Monday. The word ‘week’ can mean: an interval of seven days counted from any given day, for example, ‘My brother did this a week before graduation’; or an interval of seven days counted from Monday (a calendar week), for example, ‘This whole week I went to university.’
The Russian word ‘nedelya’ traces back to Proto-Slavic *neděľa, a calque from Ancient Greek ἄπρακτος ἡμέρα meaning ‘non-working day,’ originally referring to Sunday. However, Max Vasmer disagreed with this interpretation, believing that the word was a calque from Latin feria – ‘holiday’ (a non-working day when ‘nothing is done’), since the word is present in Western Slavic languages, which were influenced by Roman Catholicism and had minimal borrowing from Greek, unlike Eastern and Southern Slavs. The calque was based on the Proto-Slavic *ne dělati – ‘not to do.’
Now, after I have quickly but in the correct sequence demonstrated this path in my book – showing the initial layer, which is brief and surface-level yet structured with understanding – I will later return to this as another layer. But for now, this layer is an introduction. After presenting what Wikipedia states about daily time, the day, and all these time segments, the next thing to examine is what a week is. Wikipedia states: “A week (in the ecclesiastical-liturgical practice of the Russian Church – sedmitsa) is a period of time lasting seven days. A week is an interval of time lasting seven days. A calendar week is a seven-day period beginning on Monday. The word ‘week’ can mean: an interval of seven days counted from any given day, for example, ‘My brother did this a week before graduation’; or an interval of seven days counted from Monday (a calendar week), for example, ‘This whole week I went to university.’
The Russian word ‘nedelya’ traces back to Proto-Slavic *neděľa, a calque from Ancient Greek ἄπρακτος ἡμέρα meaning ‘non-working day,’ originally referring to Sunday. However, Max Vasmer disagreed with this interpretation, believing that the word was a calque from Latin feria – ‘holiday’ (a non-working day when ‘nothing is done’), since the word is present in Western Slavic languages, which were influenced by Roman Catholicism and had minimal borrowing from Greek, unlike Eastern and Southern Slavs. The calque was based on the Proto-Slavic *ne dělati – ‘not to do.’