Nones

After our choir rehearsal today of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony  – which we’ll be singing at the end of the month with visiting German children – the sun persuaded me to take the meandering route home. As I was crossing Magdalen Bridge around 3pm I saw these nuns and wondered which divine office they were processing to. Being a ‘none’ when the census asks my religion I had to look it up. I discovered that since 3pm is the ninth hour after sunrise, and the Latin for ‘nine’ is nonus, the 3pm prayers are called ‘Nones’. I also learnt that in the Roman calendar the ‘Nones’ are nine days before the Ides (in Roman counting, where you count both end days, rather than our way of counting the gaps between the days).  And the Nones of May just happen to be today.
 
And puzzlingly, I learnt that ‘noon’ has the same etymological origin. But ‘nun’ doesn’t, coming from nonna, the (medieval, not classical) Latin feminine of nonnus, meaning monk.
 
All of which I can discover standing on a bridge in the 3pm sun. Aren’t mobiles utterly wonderful?




Merci aux socialistes français qui ont, malgré tout, voté aujourd'hui.