The silly season is the period lasting for a few summer months typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media. This term was known by the end of the 19th century and listed in the second edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and remains in use at the start of the 21st century. The fifteenth edition of Brewer's expands on the second, defining the silly season as "the part of the year when Parliament and the Law Courts are not sitting (about August and September)". In the United States the period is referred to prosaically as the slow news season. In Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the silly season has come to refer to the Christmas/New Year festive period on account of the higher than usual number of social engagements where the consumption of alcohol is typical, which are in the Southern Hemisphere summer.
Read more about Silly Season: Motivation, Other Names, Side Effects, Sport, Politics
Famous quotes containing the words silly and/or season:
“Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“She, O, she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea
Hath drops too few to wash her clean again
And salt too little which may season give
To her foul tainted flesh!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)