Pylimitics

Although the ancient Egyptians were as far in the past for the ancient Greeks as those Greeks are to us, some of the ideas of their astrologers have stuck around as solidly as the Pyramids. Those astrologers calculated that there were two days every month when you definitely shouldn’t start anything important. Don’t begin a long trip, don’t start a project, don’t form a business. Those days were Very Bad Luck. It’s good fortune to know about this, but we have the bad luck that nobody knows which specific days are the bad ones. 

In the European Middle Ages they were well acquainted with bad luck, as it seemed to comprise most of the luck they had. They knew about the Egyptian astrologers’ idea that every month had two especially bad days, and they even called them the “Egyptian Days.” Chaucer refers to these in The Book of the Duchess. But when he does, he also uses the word “dismalle” (dismal). “Dismal” originally mean unlucky days or bad days, and was formed as a compound Old French word from “dis” (days) and “mal” (bad). 

Chaucer did his writing in the 1300s, of course, and within about a century people had forgotten that “dismal” meant “bad days” and started using the somewhat redundant phrase “dismal days,” which literally meant “bad days days.”   

The history of “dismal” shines a light on the dismal process of forgetfulness — within another century “dismal” had become an adjective used for anything unlucky, not just days. By the 1600s it had come to pretty much its current meaning: anything cheerless, gloomy, dark, or depressing. And of course its original association with “bad days,” not to mention the Egyptian astrologers, had been lost in one of humanity’s ongoing senior moments. Whether the astrologers predicted this too is not recorded. Since we don’t know which days are Egyptian Days, it’s probably safest to assume today is one of them. And when any given day might be very bad luck, it’s probably safest to stay in bed with the covers over your head. The good luck, though, is that laptop screens light up, and most sheets and blankets don’t interfere with wifi or bluetooth.