Early English and Christian Usage
The earliest recorded English usage of the term blue moon was in a 1524 pamphlet violently attacking the English clergy, entitled "Rede Me and Be Not Wrothe" ("Read me and be not angry"): "If they say the moon is belewe / We must believe that it is true."
Another interpretation uses a different definition of the Middle English word belewe, which, in addition to "blue", can mean "betray". By the 16th century, before the Gregorian calendar reform, the medieval computus was out of sync with the actual seasons and the moon, and occasionally spring would have begun and a full moon passed a month before the computus put the first spring moon . Thus, the clergy needed to tell the people whether the full moon was the Easter moon or a false one, which they may have called a "betrayer moon" (belewe moon) after which people would have had to continue fasting for another month in accordance with the season of Lent.
Modern interpretation of the term relates to absurdities and impossibilities; the phrase "once in a blue moon" refers to an event that will take place only at incredibly rare occasions .
Read more about this topic: Blue Moon
Famous quotes containing the words early, english, christian and/or usage:
“Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I wish the English still possessed a shred of the old sense of humour which Puritanism, and dyspepsia, and newspaper reading, and tea-drinking have nearly extinguished.”
—Norman Douglas (1868–1952)
“I never went near the Wellesley College chapel in my four years there, but I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity that school stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.... How marvelous it would have been to go to a women’s college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“...Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, “It depends.” And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.”
—Kenneth G. Wilson (b. 1923)