Citations:ice saints

English citations of ice saints

meaning the period

• 1889, Iowa. Weather Service, Report, page 88:

  […] ICE-SAINTS were this year very mild, the first decade having been decidedly warm. At Algona the wind changed at P. M. on the 12th; the air became chilly, and the night felt frosty. (Dr. Barr.)

• 1902, Royal Meteorological Society (Great Britain), Royal Meteorological Society (Gt. Brit.), Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, page 60:

  The fact, too, that the smoothed May temperatre curve for 50 years shows no particular irregularity is a proof that the ice saints are a myth. If we assume, as I have no doubt we may, that there are no variations of short period in the mean temperature curve, which do not arise accidentally, we can obtain the average temperature of any date by […]

• 1917, Harvard College Observatory, Annals, page 58:

  ... the cause of the "Ice Saints" are sun spots, the moon, the variation of droughts and wet spells, as well as the ordinary succession of hot and cold weather.

• 1946, British Zone Review: A Monthly Review of Activities in the British Zone of Germany, volume 1, page 2:

  BUCHAN's Cold Spell, or, as this terror of the market gardeners is termed in some Districts in Germany, the Ice Saints (die Eisheiligen) is nearly upon us again. The crucial nights with their dangerous frosts, threatening budding vegetation, are, the 12th, 13th and 14th of May. Millions of young plants yearly are destroyed or their growth is retarded by these three cruel nights, so aptly named in other parts of Germany “die drei gestrengen Herren” (the three cruel masters).

ambiguous or intermediate

• 2011 March 10, Will Bonner, Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets and Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 281:

  "Well, we can bring the lemon trees out now," said our gardener on Sunday. "The 'ice saints' are past." The "ice saints," are the two Saint's Days in early May that, in our area, traditionally mark the end of the risk of frost.

• 2015 January 1, Scott H. Hendrix, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 164:

  In 1525 the "ice saints" were true to their name: a heavy frost ruined the grapes and nuts froze on the trees. The return of the body to Wittenberg, its burial in the Castle Church, and the frigid weather all foreshadowed Martin Luther's own […]

meaning the saints

• 1920, https://books.google.com/books?id=HyXNNcDjsmcC Monthly Weather Review], volume 47, page 563:

  The author finds that while depressions of temperature occur in Roumania on the days of the ice saints (May 10–12) they are not a more characteristic phenomenon than depressions occurring on other dates in May.

• 1979, David Hughes, Thomas Randle, The Rhine basin: a study of development, page 104:

  I arrived in Koblenz, where the Mosel joins the Rhine, simultaneously with three venerable saints, namely, Mamertus, Pancratius and Servatius. Each spring the holy trio visits Germany's wine region and brings either a blessing or bad luck to the vineyards. Rhinelanders call them die Eisheiligen - the Ice Saints. The Ice Saints’ domain is as vast as it is colourful, taking in the entire German stretch of the Mosel, and all the Rhine valley, roughly between Bon and Heidelberg.

• 1980, World Literature Today, volume 54, page 273:

  Thus her negative judgments prove self-fulfilling. The girl is vicious, tough and sensitive — herself one of the ice saints, Pancratia, "she who fights with all means." She survives with the help of her poetry and an unsentimental, accepting aunt. The account ends, somewhat provisionally, at a turning point in the girl's life, when she moves to a boarding school run by her new family, the East German State. In keeping with the (as Arno Schmidt termed it) "porous" nature of memory,

• 2023 November 27, Andrea Bruno, In The Background Of The Muse, Youcanprint, →ISBN:

  ... the Ice Saints are not celebrated in winter, but between the 11th and 14th of May. It seems, in fact, that during those days the temperature tends to drop precipitously before the onset of fine weather.

reference

• Albert Montefiore Hyamson, A Dictionary of English Phrases: Phraseological Allusions, Catchwords ... (1922) lists "ice saints" and "frost saints" as English phrases with this sense, as well as listing "blackthorn winter"