How stars, the Moon and the search for signals shaped the ways people explain their lives.
jovial (adj.)
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The Sky Above Us
A jovial person is cheerful and good company. The word means “of Jove,” another name for Jupiter, the chief Roman god. It reached English from French in the 1580s with an astrological sense: under the influence of the planet Jupiter.1
Astrology held that people shared the nature of the planet that ruled their birth. Those born under Jupiter were thought to be cheerful, and the word kept the cheer after the belief had gone.12
It was often set against saturnine, gloomy. In Roman myth Saturn was Jupiter’s father.2
Our jovial host kept everyone’s glass full.