Well, here we are in the Dog Days of Summer. I’ve heard that expression my whole life, but never really thought about its origin – until my kids heard it and asked what it meant. I almost gave them the explanation my grandfather gave me: “It’s so hot everyone’s walking around panting like a dog!”
While it does make sense, that’s not the real origin of the saying. According to Wikipedia, it goes back centuries, to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the days when Sirius, the Dog Star (so called because it was the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major) rose with the sun. Because the equinoxes shift over time, they no longer rise together, but the expression remains. Determining the exact dates, even reading about determining the exact dates, makes my brain hurt, so we’ll just say it’s most of July and the first part of August. You know, the days when everyone walks around panting like a dog because it’s so hot!
