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Greek calends. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
Greek calends, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
Greek calends in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
Calque of Latin ad kalendās Graecās; unlike the Roman calendar, the Greek calendar had no calends.
Noun
Greek calends pl (plural only)
- (idiomatic) A time that never occurs; never; when pigs fly.
1923, [François Béroalde de Verville], “Origin of the Decretals”, in Arthur Machen, transl., Fantastic Tales or The Way to Attain—a Book Full of Pantagruelism Now Done for the First Time in English, Carbonnek : Privately printed, →OCLC, page 98:Blockheads, friends of my heart and liver, cousins of my tripe, are you ignorant that this symposium is as authentic as any of those tales of the Greek Calends, which you swallow and digest so easily, [...]?
1950 January 12, C S Lewis, “Letters: 1950 ”, in Walter Hooper, editor, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, volumes III (Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963), New York, N.Y.: HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins, →ISBN, pages 5–6:My book with Professor [John Ronald Reuel] Tolkien – any book in collaboration with that great but dilatory and unmethodical man – is dated, I fear, to appear on the Greek Kalends!
Usage notes
Used after a preposition such as at, on, or till.
Translations
never (translations include the leading preposition)
References
- John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary