In the United Kingdom and in some other places, the silly season is the period\u00a0 lasting for a few summer months typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media. It is known in many languages as the cucumber time. The term is first attested in 1861, was listed in the second (1894) 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 \u00abthe part of the year when Parliament and the Law Courts are not sitting (about August and September)\u00bb.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nIn North America the period is often referred to prosaically as the slow news season, or less commonly with the phrase dog days of summer. In Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the silly season has come to refer to the Christmas\/New Year festive period (which occurs during the summer season in the Southern Hemisphere) on account of the higher than usual number of social engagements where the consumption of alcohol is typical.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nThe term is also used in sports, to describe periods outside traditional competitive sporting seasons. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n[\u2026]<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nOther countries have comparable periods, for example the Sommerloch (\u00absummer [news]hole\u00bb) in German-speaking Europe; French has la morte-saison (\u00abthe dead season\u00bb or \u00abthe dull season\u00bb) or \u00abla saison des marronniers\u00bb (\u00abthe conker tree season\u00bb), and Swedish has nyhetstorka (\u00abnews drought\u00bb). <\/span><\/i><\/p>\nIn many languages, the name for the silly season references cucumbers (more precisely: gherkins or pickled cucumbers). Komkommertijd in Dutch, Danish agurketid, Icelandic g\u00farkut\u00ed\u00f0, Norwegian agurktid (a piece of news is called agurknytt or agurknyhet, i.e., \u00abcucumber news\u00bb), Czech okurkov\u00e1 sez\u00f3na, Slovak uhorkov\u00e1 sez\u00f3na, Polish Sezon og\u00f3rkowy, Hungarian uborkaszezon, and Hebrew \u05e2\u05d5\u05e0\u05ea \u05d4\u05de\u05dc\u05e4\u05e4\u05d5\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd (onat ha’melafefonim, \u00abseason of the cucumbers\u00bb) all mean \u00abcucumber time\u00bb or \u00abcucumber season\u00bb. The corresponding term in German is Sauregurkenzeit and in Estonian hapukurgihooaeg (\u00abpickled cucumber season\u00bb); the same term is also used in Croatian as sezona kiselih krastavaca and in Slovene as \u010das kislih kumaric. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\nThe term \u00abcucumber time\u00bb was also used in England in the 1800s to denote the slow season for tailors. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\nA silly season news item is called r\u00f6tm\u00e5nadshistoria in Sweden and m\u00e4t\u00e4kuun juttu in Finland, both literally meaning \u00abrotting-month story\u00bb. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\nIn Spain the term serpiente de verano (\u00absummer snake\u00bb) is often used, not for the season, but for the news items. The term is a reference to the Loch Ness Monster and similar creatures, who are reputed to get more headlines in summer.
\n<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seeing how this is the perfect time for this, I thought some linguistic news that doesn’t fit anywhere else might be in order. So I present to you what we in Germany call the \u00absummer hole\u00bb (Sommerloch), as defined by Wikipedia – enjoy! In the United Kingdom and in some other places, the silly season […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1256,1257,985,1258,1259],"tags":[1264,1265,1266,1267],"class_list":["post-11425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cucumber-time-es","category-dog-days-of-summer-es","category-english-2-es","category-silly-season-es","category-sommerloch-es","tag-cucumber-time-es","tag-dog-days-of-summer-es","tag-silly-season-es","tag-sommerloch-es","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11425"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11432,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11425\/revisions\/11432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}