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Greek calends

Greek calends noun: a time that never occurs; never; when pigs fly.

Noun

Greek calends pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) A time that never occurs; never; when pigs fly.
    • 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, [...]?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...
    • 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!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...

Forms of Greek calends

alternative formGreek kalends

Origin of Greek calends

Calque of Latin ad kalendās Graecās; unlike the Roman calendar, the Greek calendar had no calends.

Questions about Greek calends

What does Greek calends mean?
Greek calends means a time that never occurs; never; when pigs fly.
What part of speech is Greek calends?
Greek calends is a noun.

Words near Greek calends in the dictionary

  1. greek
  2. Greek active
  3. Greek alphabet
  4. Greek alphabets
  5. Greek arts
  6. Greek calends
  7. Greek Catholic
  8. Greek Catholics
  9. Greek chorus
  10. Greek choruses
  11. Greek cross

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Greek calends (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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