After weeks of bickering, a debt-deal framework emerges in the final hours with major influences from the Tea Party evident.
The government and the armed opposition have signed a ceasefire, in a hopeful step after weeks of bloody fighting.
Jackson's outdoor funeral service was held at the Forest Lawn Cemetery of Glendale on September 3, 2009, 10 weeks after his death.
She was saved with chest compressions and weeks of intensive care.
If a new independent review is granted, this trial could grind on for weeks or even months longer.
This treacherous wind might continue for days and even weeks.
For three dreadful weeks he ran it in agony or apprehension.
She is betrothed, and will be married on the Sabbath after the Feast of weeks.
But I suppose my mansion will not be fit to live in for some weeks to come, if ever.
It was but the fourteenth of March still, and there were six weary weeks to come.
Old English wice, from Proto-Germanic *wikon (cf. Old Norse vika, Old Frisian wike, Middle Dutch weke, Old High German wecha, German woche), probably originally with the sense of "a turning" or "succession" (cf. Gothic wikon "in the course of," Old Norse vika "sea-mile," originally "change of oar," Old English wican "yield, give way"), from PIE root *weik- "to bend, wind" (see vicarious).
"Meaning primarily 'change, alteration,' the word may once have denoted some earlier time division, such as the 'change of moon, half month,' ... but there is no positive evidence of this" [Buck]. No evidence of a native Germanic week before contact with the Romans. The seven-day week is ancient, probably originating from the 28-day lunar cycle, divisible into four periods of seven day, at the end of each of which the moon enters a new phase. Reinforced during the spread of Christianity by the ancient Jewish seven-day week.
As a Roman astrological convention it was borrowed by other European peoples; the Germanic tribes substituting their own deities for those of the Romans, without regard to planets. The Coligny calendar suggests a Celtic division of the month into halves; the regular Greek division of the month was into three decades; and the Romans also had a market week of nine days.
Greek planetary names [for the days of the week] ... are attested for the early centuries of our era, but their use was apparently restricted to certain circles; at any rate they never became popular. In Rome, on the other hand, the planetary names became the established popular terms, too strongly intrenched to be displaced by the eccl[esiastical] names, and spreading through most of western Europe. [Buck]Phrase a week, as in eight days a week recorded by 1540s; see a- (1).
Related Terms
From the beginning, time was divided into weeks, each consisting of six days of working and one of rest (Gen. 2:2, 3; 7:10; 8:10, 12; 29:28). The references to this division of days becomes afterwards more frequent (Ex. 34:22; Lev. 12:5; Num. 28:26; Deut. 16:16; 2 Chr. 8:13; Jer. 5:24; Dan. 9:24-27; 10:2, 3). It has been found to exist among almost all nations.
