Dictionary

Greek calends en · NOUN

Etymology

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

Meanings

1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) A time that never occurs; never; when pigs fly.
   • 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 1950–1963), New York, N.Y.: HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins, →ISBN, pages 5–6:
   • 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, Carbonnek [i.e., London]: Privately printed, →OCLC, page 98:

Forms

Translations (9)

ru до гре́ческих кале́нд (never (translations include the leading preposition)) · cy dydd Sul y pys (a time that never occurs) · de am Sankt-Nimmerleins-Tag (never (translations include the leading preposition)) · de Sankt-Nimmerleins-Tag (a time that never occurs) · nl met sint-juttemis (never (translations include the leading preposition)) · la ad kalendas Graecas (never (translations include the leading preposition)) · it alle calende greche (never (translations include the leading preposition)) · fr aux calendes grecques (never (translations include the leading preposition)) · cy tan ddydd Sul y pys (never (translations include the leading preposition))