My husband and I are a very snuggly couple, so it was only a matter of time before one of said, “I wonder where the word snuggle comes from? Clearly snug, but…like, tight? Because you’re coming in close?”

Turns out…not exactly. Because the “tight” meaning of snug is actually one of the latest to the game.

Snug‘s original meaning dates from the 1590s and was “compact, trim” or “protected from the weather,” specifically of ships. Related words in Scandinavian languages are snoggr, snugg, and snøg, which meant things like “neat and tidy” or even “short-haired.”

In the early 1600s, that idea of being tidy and protected had morphed into “in a state of ease or comfort.” We see this still in the expression (from the 1760s) of “snug as a bug in a rug.”

Snuggle dates from the 1680s, meaning “to move this way and that to get close to something for warmth or affection,” presumably from that notion of “state of comfort.”

The British slang of snog/snogging  for a snuggle or kissing is a variation on the spelling that harkens back to those Scandinavian roots and dates from around 1945.

In my own family history, my kids made snug a verb when they were little, proclaiming that the cats were “snugging up against” their legs. I now can’t think of that particular feline habit by any other name, LOL.

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If you’ve been following my looks into the naming conventions for the days of the week, then you know by now that each day is named for a god whose “hour” began the day in the Neo-Babylonian empire’s calendar system (they had seven hours in a day, so each day of the week began with a new one).

And with that in mind, you can probably look at Saturday and immediately go, “Oh! Saturn’s Day!” And you’d be right. But after the previous days of the weeks, which were named for Germanic or Norse equivalents of those Roman or Greek gods, you might be asking, “So…why not a Germanic equivalent? Where’s the Thor or Oden or Frigga here?”

As it turns out, there’s no equivalent to Saturn, god of agriculture, civilization, and social order, in Norse mythology. So Saturn’s name was simply brought into those systems, from which English derived. Interestingly, though, other Germanic languages, as well as some Slavic ones, went the Christian direction instead and call this last day of the week something derived from the word sabbath instead. Even French calls it samedi, from their word for sabbath.

And then…there’s Danish and Swedish. Their words (lørdag and lördag) literally mean “bath day.” Cue me laughing at that one!

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Let’s continue our dive into the names for days of the week! As with the pattern from the previous days we’ve looked at, we can guess that  Friday, too, was named after the god whose celestial body’s hour was the first hour of the day in the Neo-Babylonion empire (days were broken up into seven hours, so each day began with a new hour), but translated from Greek gods to those of Norse mythology.

So who was the sixth day named for in Babylon? Venus. Also known as Aphrodite. Goddess of love.

Who, then, was the equivalent goddess in the Germanic/Norse system? Well, not everyone could agree. The official lady assigned to the day is Frigga, which is indeed where we get that Fri- beginning to our sixth day. But Frigga was specifically the goddess of married love, which isn’t quite what Aphrodite/Venus stood for. Ahem. Some Scandinavian countries think Freya would be a better match, and so countries like Iceland actually named Friday for her instead, making it Freyjudagr (Freya’s day).

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Let’s continue our dive into the names for days of the week! In the case of Thursday, it at once follows the same pattern, naming the day after the god whose celestial body’s hour was the first hour of the day in the Neo-Babylonion empire (days were broken up into seven hours, so each day began with a new hour), but also again mixed in is some Norse mythology.

See, in those ancient calendars, this fifth day of the week was named for Zeus or, by Roman days, Jupiter. If you’re at all familiar with ancient mythology, you may remember that Zeus/Jupiter is usually denoted with lightning bolts in his hand. So who in Germanic/Norse mythology would be the equivalent?

Why, your friendly neighborhood Thor, of course!

So our English translation and eventual contraction of “Thor’s Day” is Thursday. (Side note: thunder is actually also a direct borrow from Thor!)

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Let’s continue our dive into the names for days of the week! In the case of Tuesday, it at once follows the same pattern, naming the day after the god whose celestial body’s hour was the first hour of the day in the Neo-Babylonion empire (days were broken up into seven hours, so each day began with a new hour.)

In the case of Tuesday, however, it isn’t quite as one-to-one as Sunday (after the sun) and Monday (after the moon) in our English translation.

In that ancient empire, the third day of the week was named for Mars, the planet closest to earth and the god of war. There are plenty of languages that reflect this still, like French’s Mardi.

In Middle English, the word for this day of the week was spelled Tiues-dai. That was, in turn, taken from Old English tiwesdaeg. The Tiwes here is the possessive form of Tiu, who was the god war in Germanic mythology. Interestingly, though, while this ancient god is the equivalent of Mars in many ways, unlike Mars in Roman mythology, Tiu was the supreme god in German mythology, so the name itself is actually more closely related to Zeus.

We already covered Wednesday, so next week, we’ll jump to Thursday!

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If you already read last week’s word about why the first day of the week is named after the sun, this week’s might be a little boring. But in case you’re coming here fresh JUST for this word, I’m going to include the same generaly history. 😉 So…why is the second day of the week Monday?

First: Monday = Moonday

The Middle English was spelled Monedai and the Old English was mōndæg, which was itself a contraction of mōnandæg (monan meaning “moon”).

The tradition, though, is even more ancient. Scholars believe the astronomical naming of days goes back to the Neo-Babylonian empire, dating to around the time of the Jewish exile in Babylon, though the first written record of the system is from the Roman empire era.

In this naming system, each day is broken up into seven hours, and each hour given the name of a prominent god after whom a celestial body was named. The first hour of each day gave that day its name.

Sunday, therefore, is named after the sun because that day of the week began with the hour of the sun. Monday, on the other hand, began with the hour of the moon–the second in the list of celestial-deities.

Many languages still preserve this tradition. For instance, in French, the word for Monday is Lundi, given that lune is the word for moon.

Word Nerds Merch!