Thursday

How to spell thursday

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce thursday

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does thursday mean?

1. nounThe fifth day of the week, following Wednesday and preceding Friday.

Thursday in a sentence

• The team meeting is scheduled for thursday afternoon.

• She catches an early train home every thursday.

Where does thursday come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the fifth day of the week, and its name carries the memory of a thunder god. It comes from the Old English Thunresdaeg, literally 'the day of Thunor', Thunor being the Anglo-Saxon thunder god, the same divine figure the Norse called Thor. The name was a Germanic reworking of the Latin dies Iovis, 'the day of Jupiter', since Jupiter was the Roman sky and thunder god, and early speakers matched their own thunderer to his Roman counterpart. The spelling tightened over the centuries: the older 'Thunres' lost its inner 'n' and softened to 'Thurs', which is why the word looks nothing like the modern noun 'thunder' even though they share the same root. The hidden trap for writers is exactly that buried history; the 'u' sits where you might expect nothing, and the cluster 'thurs' has to be remembered rather than sounded out.

How the word is built

• Thurs- (from Thunor/Thor, the Norse-Germanic thunder god)
• -day (from Old English dæg)