Etymology: Mentioned in 1256 as the English or Anglo-Norman name for French les mals jours: whence it appears to be Old French dis mal = Latin dies mali ( < diēs days, plural of diēs day (see diurnal adj. and n.) + mali, plural of malus evil) evil days, unlucky days. It was thus originally a substantive of collective meaning; when ‘day’ was added, making ‘dismal days’, (compare ‘summer days,’ ‘winter days’), its attributive use passed into an adjective, and, its original application being obscured, it was finally before 1600 extended < day, days, to be a general attribute. See Note.Note. As to the identity of dismal with Old French (= Anglo-Norman) dis mal < Latin dies mali , see Professor Skeat in Trans. Philol. Soc. 1888, p. 2. Already in 1617, Minsheu (whose own memory doubtless recalled the time when dismal was used only to qualify days) derived it from ‘Latin dies malus , en euill and vnhappie time’. Early corroborative evidence comes from Old French and Icelandic sources. (1) The Anglo-Norman Art de Kalender of Rauf de Linham, 1256 (manuscripts at Glasgow, Oxford, Cambridge; extracts printed by M. Paul Meyer in his official Rapport on Documents Manuscrits de l'ancienne littérature de la France, Paris 1871, pp. 127–9), has a passage of sixty lines on the Dies mali , beginning ‘Ore dirrai des jours denietz, Que vous dismal ( Bodley MS. dismol) appelletz’ [Now shall I tell of the forbidden days, Which you call dismal ], and further on ‘Dismal les appelent plusours, Ceo est a dire les mals jours’ [Dismal several call them, That is to say the evil days]. Here dismal is given as the equivalent of ‘mals jours’, evil days. (2) A short Icelandic treatise in a Copenhagen manuscript (Arna-Magnæan 350, written 1363, lf. 148 a), begins ‘Her greinir um dismala daga. Tueir ero þeir dagar i huerium manadi er at bokmali kallaz dies mali..enn þat þydiz illir dagar’ [Here tells of the dismal days. There are two days in every month that in the book-language (Latin) are called dies mali , and that is interpreted ‘evil days’]. The word dismal is not Norse, and must have been learned from England before 1363. In dismala daga , it is probably an adjective accusative plural, but may be a noun genitive plural, ‘days of the dismals’. Both the Anglo-Norman and the Icelandic treatises give a list of the dis mal or dies mali , identical with that given by various mediæval writers, and computable by the mnemonic distich given by Du Cange s.v. Dies Ægyptiaci: see sense A. 1.

Etymology: < dismal adj.