Happy Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Nov
13

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia, a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví meaning Friday, and dekatreís meaning thirteen, attached to phobía meaning fear. The term triskaidekaphobia derives from the Greek words “tris”, meaning ‘three’, “kai”, meaning ‘and’, and “deka”, meaning ‘ten’. the whole word means three and ten. The word was derived in 1911 and first appeared in a mainstream source in 1953. In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve hours of the clock, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, twelve gods of Olympus, etc., whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness. There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners. Friday the 13th occurs when the thirteenth day of a month falls on Friday, which superstition holds to be a day of good or bad luck. In the Gregorian calendar, this day occurs at least once, but at most three times a year. Any month’s 13th day will fall on a Friday if the month starts on a Sunday. This year, in 2009, this applied to the months of February, and March, and now November. The next instance of this three Friday the thirteenths appears on the calendar for the year 2015.

 

Comments are closed.