Not to be confused with 'MAYDAY!' Here's a little trivia for you:
How did the word "Mayday" come to be a cry for help? Does it have anything to do with the "May Day" holiday?
Aside from the obvious fact that the Mayday '(used as a distress call)' and May Day 'the first of May, variously celebrated with festivities and observances', are both spelled and pronounced the same way, no, they are not related.
The Mayday that is an international radiotelephone distress call used by ships and airplanes is simply a phonetic representation of the French word m'aider, an imperative meaning 'help me!'. It could also be a shortening of the French phrase venez m'aider 'come help me!', which is somewhat less likely on the grounds that if you were in serious trouble you'd probably want use a shorter expression.
Mayday was adopted as a distress call by the International Radio Telegraph Convention in 1927.
~ Brendan Pimper
~updated source information: Jesse Sheidlower
1 comment:
Your source should not be Brendan Pimper (me!), but rather Jesse Sheidlower, who was writing the "Random House Word of the Day" back then. I'm just the schmo who sent in the question...
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