English · Idiom Historical

Greek Calends

Preserved but no longer current.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Never. To defer anything to the Greek Calends is to defer it sine die. There were no calends in the Greek months. See NEVER.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Không bao giờ, hoãn vô thời hạn

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)

Sources & notes

Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.

Topics: Historical slang (1800s)

Common questions

What does “Greek Calends” mean?

Never. To defer anything to the Greek Calends is to defer it sine die. There were no calends in the Greek months. See NEVER.

Is “Greek Calends” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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