Recently, at work, I was rather surprised to be mildly castigated for using the seemingly-innocent phrase: “Friday week.”

It had been in answer to a question:

“When are you off?”

“Friday week.”

“No one says that anymore.”

Well, I do.  I like the form of expression of the name of a day of the week followed by the word ‘week’; sometimes, I will even follow it by the word ‘fortnight’.  To my mind, it is a perfectly accurate description of the day I have in mind; superior to saying ‘this’ or ‘next’.

However, I found myself in a minority.  A North American colleague had not the faintest idea of what I meant by the expression.

So, I am grateful to the Arctic Monkeys, who appear to support my viewpoint.  In their song, Do I Wanna Know they include the lyric, “That the nights were mainly made for saying things that you can’t say tomorrow day”.  This seems like an even more extreme example of the phraseology than ‘Friday week’.  The term ‘tomorrow day’ has an etymology dating back to 1384 and the Wycliffe Bible.

Admittedly, in the case of ‘tomorrow day’, I think just using ‘tomorrow’ on its own might be simpler.  However, I am all in favour of reviving antiquated forms of expression, and so I might start to bring it into my own vocabulary.

When I am next asked:

“When will that report be ready?”

I’ll be ready to answer:

“Tomorrow day.”

© Simon Turner-Tree

Simon Turner-Tree must dash.  He has a train to catch tomorrow day.