Thursday

Thursday is the day of the week following Wednesday and before Friday. According to the ISO 8601 international standard adopted in most western countries, it is the fourth day of the week. In countries that use the Sunday-first convention, Thursday is defined as the fifth day of the week. It is the fifth day of the week in the Judeo-Christian liturgical calendar. It is often abbreviated to Th or Thu.

See Names of the days of the week for more on naming conventions.

The name is derived from Old English Þūnresdæg and Middle English Thuresday (with loss of -n-, first in northern dialects, from influence of Old Norse Þorsdagr) meaning "Thor's Day". It was named after the Norse god of Thunder, Thor. Thunor, Donar (German, Donnerstag) and Thor are derived from the name of the Germanic god of thunder, Thunraz, equivalent to Jupiter in the interpretatio romana.

Estonians did not work on Thursdays (days of Thor) and Thursday nights were called "evenings of Tooru". Some sources say Estonians used to gather in holy woods (Hiis) on Thursday evenings, where a bagpipe player sat on a stone and played while people danced and sang until the dawn.

In most Romance languages, the day is named after the Roman god Jupiter, who was the god of sky and thunder. In Latin, the day was known as Iovis Dies, "Jupiter's Day". In Latin, the genitive or possessive case of Jupiter was Iovis/Jovis and thus in most Romance languages it became the word for Thursday: Italian giovedì, Spanish jueves, French jeudi, Sardinian jòvia, Catalan dijous, Galician "xoves" and Romanian joi. This is also reflected in the p-Celtic Welsh dydd Iau.

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