1723: Months were Adjectives: Calends and Ides Sep 2, 2019

English is pretty good making it blurring the lines between nouns, verbs, and adjectives: not usually so much with Latin. Nevertheless, the months now spoken of as nouns began as nouns. This is because for much of Roman history, the calends were more important linguistically than the notion of the whole month together. Not only would a month be said in the form of, say “the March month”, but dates were given in reference to the calends and ides. In fact, it was the practice that dates after the ides of a month were given in reference to the next, so September 16 was expressed as "the 14th day before the October calends" (a.d. XIV Kal. Oct.). Luckily, dates have gotten a bit simpler since then, especially since the ides are not the same month-to-month.

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