shark week

A jocular reference to Shark Week, an annual week-long marathon of shark-related programming on Discovery Channel, which, like a menstrual period, is bloody.

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shark week (countable and uncountable, plural shark weeks)

1. (informal, humorous, chiefly Canada, US) The week during which a woman menstruates.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:menstruation

   • 2008, Coco Tanaka, "Shark Week!", LA CityBeat, Volume 6, Number 36, 4 September 2008 - 10 September 2008, page 17:

     There are several ways to green your Shark Week, ranging from bare-minimum "shucks, why not?" consciousness to Burning Man aggro hippie.

   • 2012, Dan Savage, "Hotel room clean-up", Now (Toronto), Volume 31, Number 29, 15 March 2012 - 21 March 2012, page 102:

     If you've booked a hotel room, STAIN, and it's shark week for the wife, or a certain former senator drops in (drops out?) when you have anal sex, there's always the option of bringing your own santorum- and/or menstrual-blood-coloured/stained towels from home.

   • 2014, Michael Walsh, "Christening the backyard," Catalyst Magazine (RMIT University), Volume 70, Issue 2, April 2014, page 43:

     Imagine my shock at discovering what those little bins with the flaps in bathrooms were really for, or that when girls mentioned shark week they didn't mean there was a Jaws marathon on SBS.

• Ragosta, Sachiko, Obedin-Maliver, Juno, Fix, Laura, Stoeffler, Ari, Hastings, Jen, Capriotti, Matthew R., Flentje, Annesa, Lubensky, Micah E., Lunn, Mitchell R., Moseson, Heidi (2021 September 1) “From 'Shark-Week' to 'Mangina': An Analysis of Words Used by People of Marginalized Sexual Orientations and/or Gender Identities to Replace Common Sexual and Reproductive Health Terms”, in Health Equity, volume 5, number 1, Mary Ann Liebert, →DOI, page 712 of 707–717

• “shark week n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present