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Encyclopedia Britannica



DISMAL

This article appears in Volume V08, Page 313 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: DIO-DRO
DISMAL , an
adjective
  meaning dreary, gloomy, and so a name given to stretches of swampy land on the
east
 
coast
  of the United States, as the Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina. The derivation has been much discussed. In the early examples of the use the word is a substantive, especially in the expression " in the dismal," i.e. in the dismal time or days. Later it became adjectival, especially in combination with " days." It has been connected with " decimal," med. Latin decimalis, belonging to a tithe or tenth, and thus the " dismal days " are the unpleasant days connected with the
extortion
  and oppression of exacting payment of
tithes
 . According to the New
English
  Dictionary, quoting Professor W. W. Skeat, " dismal " is derived, through an Anglo-Fr. dis mal, from the Lat. dies mali, evil or unpropitious days. This Anglo-French expression, explained as les mal jours, is found in a MS. of Rauf de Linham's Art de Kalender, 1256. These days of evil omen were known as Dies Aegyptiaci (Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.) or Egyptian days, either as having been instituted by Egyptian astrologers or with reference to the " ten plagues "; so Chaucer, " I trowe hit was in the dismal, That were the ten woundes of Egipte " (Book of the Duchesse, 1206). There were two such days in each month.
See Skeat, Trans. Philol. Soc. (1888), p. 2, and
note
  on the line in the " Book of the Duchesse," The Complete Works of
Geoffrey
  Chaucer, vol. i. (1894).


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