While you’re trying to keep it cool on a shoestring budget, we have some trivia about the origins of summer-related idioms. Explore how the dog days began in the stars, why one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and why that beach vacation is happening rain or shine.
Meaning: The hottest part of the summer.
“Dog days of summer” is a colloquial expression used to describe the hottest part of the year. Technically, the dog days occur between July 3 and August 11 in the Northern Hemisphere, due to an astronomical occurrence. This period of reliably hot and humid weather coincides with the rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, part of the Canis Major (Greater Dog) constellation, after which it is named. The ancient Greeks believed that the rising of this star caused the summer heat. Even the name of the star, “Sirius,” is derived from the Greek seirios, meaning “scorching.”
Today, we know that this star has no impact on the summertime heat, but the nickname for the time period has persisted nonetheless. In the early 16th century, the phrase “dog days” began appearing in English to describe the hot summer months. It was a direct translation of the Latin dies caniculares, but English speakers were the first to use it as an idiom.
Meaning: Something will happen regardless of the circumstances.
While summer is often depicted with sunny skies, showers are common in many places. Thus, the phrase “rain or shine” is used both literally and metaphorically, as in, “The parade starts at noon, rain or shine,” or, “She’s always been there for me, come rain or shine.” The exact origin is unknown, but a figurative usage shows up as early as 1622 in a poem called “Faire-virtue” by George Wither: “Or shine, or raine, or Blow, I, my Resolutions know.” Almost 300 years later, a 1908 Sears Roebuck catalog demonstrated the literal usage in an ad for coats: “These overcoats do double service, being adapted for all kinds of chilly weather, rain or shine.”
Meaning: To travel using a very small amount of money.
Summer is for adventuring, so you might hear backpackers or campers talk about their “shoestring budget,” which is an idiom to describe low-cost travel. The concept of “shoestring” as a word to mean “small amount of money” emerged in the late 19th century. A possible source of the idiom came from wandering peddlers who offered small items such as fabric, trinkets, and shoelaces to townspeople as they passed through. These items were low cost, and soon shoelaces or “shoestrings” became associated with very small amounts of money. It’s unknown who coined the term, but today, anything involving low costs or using a small budget can be described as “shoestring.”
Meaning: Made warm or brown by the sun.
Although “sun-kissed” might be a modern makeup trend, the adjective was first recorded 200 years ago in the early 19th century. It can describe people, places, and things that have been touched by the sun (or at least look like they have been). An early example of this comes from an 1899 edition of the National Audubon Society’s Bird-Lore magazine, which included the line, “[Swallows] have gained enormous heights, and are soaring majestically in the sun-kissed zenith.”
Meaning: The situation is not certain to improve just because one good thing has happened; a single instance does not indicate a trend.
Speaking of swallows, Greek philosopher Aristotle popularized this idiom more than 2,000 years ago in Book I of Nicomachean Ethics, with the line, “For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.” This is in reference to the migration of swallows at the beginning of summer, relating to the idea that the arrival of a single bird does not indicate that the entire flock will migrate. Aristotle might have been inspired by one of Aesop’s fables, “The Spindrift & the Swallow.”
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