Wednesday

Wednesday is the middle day of the working week, the point where Monday is behind and Friday is still out of reach. English named it after the god Woden.

Old English Wōdnesdæg meant "Woden's day", the god Norse sagas call Odin, and that silent d in the modern spelling is the last trace of him. The Romans gave the day to Mercury, messenger of the gods, so French has mercredi, Italian mercoledì and Spanish miércoles. German dropped the gods altogether and settled on Mittwoch, "midweek", and Finnish keskiviikko means the same. Latvian simply counts: trešdiena, the third day.

Americans call it hump day, the top of the hill before the slide toward the weekend. A 2013 GEICO advert with a camel walking through an office asking "Guess what day it is?" turned the phrase into a meme. The old English rhyme "Monday's Child", first written down in Devon in 1838, was less kind and declared that Wednesday's child is full of woe. The cartoonist Charles Addams took the hint when his gloomy little girl in The Addams Family needed a first name, and Wednesday Addams has carried it since the 1960s TV show. In 2022 Netflix gave her a series of her own, partly directed by Tim Burton, and a short dance scene from it was copied by millions online.

The day has even made it onto a football badge. Sheffield Wednesday, one of the oldest professional clubs in England, began in 1867 as an offshoot of the Wednesday Cricket Club, founded in 1820 by local craftsmen who had Wednesday afternoons free. On the church calendar Ash Wednesday opens Lent, 46 days before Easter, which gives this plain midweek day a more serious side once a year.