August (i/ˈɔːɡʊst/ AW-guust) is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars and one of seven months with a length of 31 days.
In the Southern Hemisphere, August is the seasonal equivalent of February in the Northern Hemisphere.
In common years no other month starts on the same day of the week as August, though in leap years February starts on the same day. August ends on the same day of the week as November every year.
This month was originally named Sextilis in Latin, because it was the sixth month in the original ten-month Roman calendar under Romulus in 753 BC, when March was the first month of the year. About 700 BC it became the eighth month when January and February were added to the year before March by King Numa Pompilius, who also gave it 29 days. Julius Caesar added two days when he created the Julian calendar in 45 BC giving it its modern length of 31 days. In 8 BC it was renamed in honor of Augustus. (Despite common belief, he did not take a day from February; see the debunked theory on month lengths) According to a Senatus consultum quoted by Macrobius, he chose this month because it was the time of several of his great triumphs, including the conquest of Egypt.
Read more about August: Events in August, August Symbols
Famous quotes containing the word august:
“What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them.”
—J. August Strindberg (1849–1912)
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)