THREE TIMES NINE

August, blessed, harvest

Linguistics

| 27-08-2021

Augustus literally means "blessed, sanctified, exalted" – surely that's a nice name for a month (though of course the month is named after Emperor Augustus, also known as Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavian). In Middle Dutch this month was called arenmaent ("ears month"), which could be translated as oogstmaand ("harvest month"). That seems to be quite different from augustus, but it actually isn't: the word oogst originated from the word augustus. In West Flemish, oest – which is very similar to Afrikaans oes – means both oogst ("harvest") and augustus ("august"). To my surprise, the other Germanic languages all seem to use very different words for oogst, although English harvest is somewhat reminiscent of Danish høst and – to a lesser extent – Norwegian innhøsting. But you can read more about that next month.