Greek calends

English

Etymology

The Greeks had no calends.

Noun

1. (idiomatic) A time that never occurs; never; when pigs fly.
   • 1923, [François Béroalde de Verville], “Origin of the Decretals”, in Arthur Machen, transl., Fantastic Tales or The Way to Attain—a Book Full of Pantagruelism Now Done for the First Time in English, Carbonnek [i.e., London]: Privately printed, →OCLC, page 98:

     Blockheads, friends of my heart and liver, cousins of my tripe, are you ignorant that this symposium is as authentic as any of those tales of the Greek Calends, which you swallow and digest so easily, [...]?

   • 1950 January 12, C[live] S[taples] Lewis, “Letters: 1950 [To Sister Penelope CSMV (BOD)]”, in Walter Hooper, editor, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, volumes III (Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963), New York, N.Y.: HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins, →ISBN, pages 5–6:

     My book with Professor [John Ronald Reuel] Tolkien – any book in collaboration with that great but dilatory and unmethodical man – is dated, I fear, to appear on the Greek Kalends!

Usage notes

Used after a preposition such as at, on, or till.

Translations

never

• French: aux calendes grecques
• Italian: alle calende greche
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Latin: ad kalendas Graecas
• Russian: до гре́ческих кале́нд (do gréčeskix kalénd)

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “Greek calends”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)