Blursday
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈblɜːzdeɪ/
ipa: /-di/
ipa: /ˈblɜɹzˌdeɪ/
ipa: /-ˌdi/
rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)zdeɪ
rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)zdi
Forms: form: Blursdays
Etymology: Blend of blur + Thursday, popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic (beginning 2020) due to periods of lockdown or remote work when people felt that days had become undistinguishable.
Senses: examples: text: Blah-day, Blues-day or Blurs-day? Get your colors crystal clear at the Bass Museum.
ref: 1986 May 30, “Top of the week”, in Jim Hampton, editor, The Miami Herald, Miami, Fla.: The McClatchy Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, section D (Weekend), page 13D:
text: Thursday – bit of a blursday
ref: 1989 [1988], John Kitching, “Weak Week”, in John Foster, compiler, Another Second Poetry Book, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 33:
text: "Yeah, it's been a long day." Pausing, he looked up at the desert moon. "Say, what day is it, anyway?" / "Blursday, my friend, Every day is Blursday."
ref: 2010 April, Dave [William] Hnida, “Blursday”, in Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 213:
text: Sometimes his mother [who has depression] doesn't make it out of bed at all – or doesn't make it back from the night before till two days later – […] So when she fails to come home one evening, it's not a huge surprise. But once ‘Whensday’ becomes ‘Blursday’ and Blursday becomes ‘Lieday’, things start to get desperate. Stomachs are complaining, cockroaches are crawling around the kitchen, and the teachers are beginning to comment on Laurence’s propensity to fall asleep at his desk[…].
ref: 2016, Ella Berthoud, Susan Elderkin, “depressed parent, having a”, in The Story Cure: An A–Z of Books to Keep Kids Happy, Healthy and Wise, Edinburgh: Canongate Books, →ISBN, page 77:
text: Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.”
ref: 2020 April 3, Heidi Pitlor, “Days without Name: On Time in the Time of Coronavirus”, in Literary Hub, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2024:
text: 2020 summarized: waking up on Blursday and occasionally interacting with other people by shouting "You're on mute!" That is my most frequently used sentence by far this year.
ref: 2020 December 20, @Parisa__Rashidi, Twitter, archived from the original on 20 Dec 2020:
text: It was an ingenious idea—your own, in fact—to celebrate Sweet Blursday in the classic fashion. Alone at home, sans pants, but connected to nearest and dearest via group video chat.
ref: 2021, Nick Mamatas, “The Man You Flee at Parties”, in Preston Grassmann, editor, Out of the Ruins, London: Titan Books, →ISBN:
text: “Monday,” ”Tuesday,” and ”Wednesday” have all become "Blursday." This new word highlights how central altered experiences and conceptions of time were to experiences of the pandemic – and to the way we live our lives and order our societies more generally.
ref: 2023, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Lynn Kaye, “Thinking Temporally Today”, in Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Lynn Kaye, editors, Time: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, →ISSN, part I (Time: An Interdisciplinary Overture), page 10:
text: Thirty years ago, if I told my grandma that the previous week had been full of blursdays (busy days that ran into each other) she would also have looked at me blankly as the term had not yet been coined.
ref: 2024, Heather Willms, “Vocabulary”, in Joanne Close, editor, Bridging the Reading Gap: Explicit Instruction that Supports Spelling, Phonics, Morphology, and Vocabulary Development in Grades 4–8, Markham, Ont.: Pembroke Publishers, →ISBN, page 30:
glosses: A day of the week not easily distinguished from other days.
Related terms: blue Monday