Other Names
Other countries have comparable periods, for example the Sommerloch ("summer hole") in Germany; French has la morte-saison ("the dead season" or "the dull season"), and Swedish has nyhetstorka ("news drought").
In many languages, the name for the silly season references cucumbers (more precisely: gherkins or pickled cucumbers). Komkommertijd in Dutch, Danish agurketid, Icelandic gúrkutíð, Norwegian agurktid, Czech okurková sezóna, Slovak uhorková sezóna, Polish Sezon ogórkowy, Hungarian uborkaszezon, Hebrew עונת המלפפונים (Onat Ha'melafefonim) and Estonian hapukurgihooaeg all mean "cucumber time" or "cucumber season". The corresponding German term is Sauregurkenzeit ("pickled cucumber season"); the same term is also used in Slovene as čas kislih kumaric.
The term "cucumber time" was also used in England in the 1800s to denote the slow season for tailors.
A silly season news item is called rötmånadshistoria in Sweden and mätäkuun juttu in Finland, both literally meaning "rotting-month story".
In Spain the term serpiente de verano ("summer snake") is often used, not for the season, but for the news.
Read more about this topic: Silly Season
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“No, no! I don’t, I don’t want to know your name. You don’t have a name, and I don’t have a name, either. No names here. Not one name.”
—Bernardo Bertolucci (b. 1940)
“The pangs of conscience, where are the pangs of conscience? Orestes and Clytemnestra, Reinhold doesn’t even know the names of those fine folk. He simply hopes, heartily and sincerely, that Franz is dead as a doornail and won’t be found.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)