[SOC] Sennight

[Ian C. Purdie]

SENNIGHT - A week.

Among Germanic peoples it was once normal to record the passage of time by the
number of nights rather than days. Sennight is an abbreviation of the fuller
phrase seven nights, hence a week. So Sir Thomas Malory wrote in Le Mort
d�Arthur (1485): �They sojourned there a sennight, and were well eased of their
wounds, and at the last departed�. It has been written in various ways down the
centuries, for example as sen�night and sevennight. The same process led to
fortnight from fourteen nights. It�s a quirk of the language that fortnight has
survived as standard British English (though not American) while sennight is now
defunct. It did last into the twentieth century in some areas as a dialect term,
though eventually driven out by competition with the shorter week.

http://www.quinion.com/words/weirdwords/ww-sen1.htm

LUSTRUM

Definition:   \Lus"trum\, n.; pl. E. {Lustrums}, L. {Lustra}. [L. Cf.
2d & 3d {Luster}.]
A lustration or purification, especially the purification of the whole Roman
people, which was made by the censors once in five years. Hence: A period of
five years.

http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/lustrum