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WEEK - 6 dictionary results
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week
[week] 
–noun
| 1. | a period of seven successive days, usually understood as beginning with Sunday and ending with Saturday. |
| 2. | a period of seven successive days that begins with or includes an indicated day: the week of June 3; Christmas week. |
| 3. | (often initial capital letter ) a period of seven successive days devoted to a particular celebration, honor, cause, etc.: National Book Week. |
| 4. | the working days or working portion of the seven-day period; workweek: A 35-hour week is now commonplace. |
–adverb
| 5. | British. seven days before or after a specified day: I shall come Tuesday week. He left yesterday week. |
Origin:
bef. 900; ME weke, OE wice; c. D week, ON vika week, Goth wikō turn; akin to L vicis (gen.) turn (see vice 3 )
bef. 900; ME weke, OE wice; c. D week, ON vika week, Goth wikō turn; akin to L vicis (gen.) turn (see vice 3 )
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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|
Link To WEEK
| week (wēk) n.
[Middle English weke, from Old English wicu; see weik-2 in Indo-European roots.] |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Week
Week\, n. [OE. weke, wike, woke, wuke AS. weocu, wicu, wucu; akin to OS. wika, OFries. wike, D. week, G. woche, OHG. wohha, wehha, Icel. vika, Sw. vecka, Dan. uge, Goth. wik?, probably originally meaning, a succession or change, and akin to G. wechsel change, L. vicis turn, alternation, and E. weak. Cf. Weak.] A period of seven days, usually that reckoned from one Sabbath or Sunday to the next. I fast twice in the week. --Luke xviii. 12. Note: Although it [the week] did not enter into the calendar of the Greeks, and was not introduced at Rome till after the reign of Theodesius, it has been employed from time immemorial in almost all Eastern countries. --Encyc. Brit. Feast of Weeks. See Pentecost, 1. Prophetic week, a week of years, or seven years. --Dan. ix. 24. Week day. See under Day.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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week
O.E. wice, from P.Gmc. *wikon (cf. O.N. vika, O.Fris. wike, M.Du. weke, O.H.G. wecha, Ger. woche), probably originally with the sense of "a turning" or "succession" (cf. Goth. wikon "in the course of," O.N. vika "sea-mile," originally "change of oar," O.E. wican "yield, give way"), from PIE base *weik- "to bend, wind" (see vicarious). "Meaning primarily 'change, alteration,' the word may once have denoted some earlier time division, such as the 'change of moon, half month,' ... but there is no positive evidence of this" [Buck]. No evidence of a native Gmc. week before contact with the Romans. The seven-day week is ancient, probably originating from the 28-day lunar cycle, divisible into four periods of seven day, at the end of each of which the moon enters a new phase. Reinforced during the spread of Christianity by the ancient Jewish seven-day week. As a Roman astrological convention it was borrowed by other European peoples; the Gmc. tribes substituting their own deities for those of the Romans, without regard to planets. The Coligny calendar suggests a Celtic division of the month into halves; the regular Gk. division of the month was into three decades; and the Romans also had a market week of nine days.
"Greek planetary names [for the days of the week] ... are attested for the early centuries of our era, but their use was apparently restricted to certain circles; at any rate they never became popular. In Rome, on the other hand, the planetary names became the established popular terms, too strongly intrenched to be displaced by the eccl[esiastical] names, and spreading through most of western Europe." [Buck]
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Week
From the beginning, time was divided into weeks, each consisting of six days of working and one of rest (Gen. 2:2, 3; 7:10; 8:10, 12; 29:28). The references to this division of days becomes afterwards more frequent (Ex. 34:22; Lev. 12:5; Num. 28:26; Deut. 16:16; 2 Chr. 8:13; Jer. 5:24; Dan. 9:24-27; 10:2, 3). It has been found to exist among almost all nations.
Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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week
period of seven days, a unit of time artificially devised with no astronomical basis. The origin of the term is generally associated with the ancient Jews and the biblical account of the Creation, according to which God laboured for six days and rested on the seventh. Evidence indicates, however, that the Jews may have borrowed the idea of the week from Mesopotamia, for the Sumerians and the Babylonians divided the year into weeks of seven days each, one of which they designated a day of recreation.
Learn more about week with a free trial on Britannica.com.
Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
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