Yesterweek

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Chris. Hi, Martha. This is Kate calling from New York City.

Hi, Kate. Welcome to the show.

So I was listening to your show a while ago with my husband, and it was the episode where you talked about how it gets really fuzzy, the difference between this week and next week.

Oh, yeah. And we were talking about that. And we started thinking about last week as a result. And we were thinking about yesterday. And why don’t we say yesterweek, right? We say yesterday and yesteryear, but what about yesterweek and yestermonth? We were wondering about that.

Okay. Yeah, solid question. Those are really good ideas. That would be really helpful, yesterweek.

I think so, too. But he does say that. Would we run into the same problem with yesterweek? Do you mean actually last week or the week before?

No, I would think it would be last week.

Okay. Well, we say, yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it, that we say last night but not last day? We say yesterday. And we say last week but not yesterweek. But it hasn’t always been like that, right?

No, it hasn’t. There have been lots of different versions of words that start with yester, but they tend to be a lot older, much, much older, like hundreds of years older. And I guess it’s a good example of the kind of almost Darwinian process that language goes through. You have lots of different competing terms for this and that, and some of them fall out.

So really what we’re left with is yesterday and, what, yesteryear. Those are pretty much the only two that are widely used, right? You might run across things like yester evening in a poem, but we just wouldn’t use it.

I used to be an actress a million years ago, and in middle school we did Pippin, and there’s a great line that the grandmother says in Pippin. She’s talking about how she’s so old. And she describes, she says, when your best days are yester, the rest are twice as dear. Which I always thought was kind of cute and funny and descriptive because I knew it meant in the past. When your best days are yester, the rest are twice as dear.

That’s very good. Very interesting.

Yeah, yester is an old adjective that just means of or belonging to yesterday. But gosh, that’s a great example of it. There is a British use of yesterday that I like very much, which is where you say, you could say yesterday week, right? Or you could say yesterday a week. So it means a week ago yesterday. A week ago yesterday. You can also do it with days of the week. So Tuesday week. It can be Tuesday week we’re going to the store or Tuesday week we went to the store.

Yeah, but that’s confusing, right? Tuesday week. I’ve definitely heard.

No, you just pick Tuesday and move.

Well, I’ve heard that in the South, Tuesday week. We’re going to do that Tuesday week for sure.

Yeah, but what do you think about Yester Month? I mean, I would like to bring it back. I feel like it has a place, but I also like to make up words, so why not?

So you have an alternative then to Yester whatever?

No. Wah.

No, okay. Kate, thank you so much for your call. Really appreciate it.

Thank you, guys. Bye.

Thanks, Kate. Bye-bye.

Bye. Yesteryear. We say yesteryear. We do. But even then, that’s kind of old-fashioned, right?

Well, it’s a more general term, don’t you think? The great hits of yesteryear.

Yeah, yeah. There was an old-time radio show I used to listen to. The announcer always said, the thrilling tales of yesteryear.

There you go. But that’s different from the year that preceded this one, right? I mean, it’s easier just to say last year, I guess.

Yeah, it’s like another era is what it means really than like last year.

Yeah. Really, the one that’s familiar is yesterday. Yesterday, that’s it. And even I noticed in the etymological notes in the dictionaries, they talk about we’re one of the few languages that uses it that way because yester, in many other languages, or the forms that are like yester, are used simply alone to mean yesterday without tacking on the word day.

Right, without the day, yeah. So you could, in other languages, say yester and everyone would know. Do you mean 24 hours ago?

Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah. Huh. What’s the word that’s been on your mind lately? Give us a call about it, 877-929-9673, or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.