Words of the Season
Midweek Mélange
While making lists and checking them twice, today I am posting a borrowed list. This edited piece is from Merriam Webster, and gives some history of archaic seasonal words we use every year. I hope you enjoy them!
My best wishes for a day filled with contentment, whatever that means to you, in whatever way you celebrate! ~Kate
Even though most of the songs we hear during the holiday season were written (or at least given English lyrics) in the 1800s and 1900s, many of them use words that were already out of use for centuries. In addition to the old traditions, the language of Christmas is, itself, old-fashioned.
There are Germanic roots everywhere in our celebration of the Christmas holiday. The image of the jolly elf known as Santa Claus is attributed to the Dutch version of St. Nicholas, or Sinterklaas. Our tradition of a decorated evergreen Christmas tree comes from Germany.
Many of the words most evocative of the season are derived from Old English.
Christmas
The only word from this group to trace back to Latin roots is Christmas itself.
Christmas literally mean’s “Christ’s mass.” Both Christ and mass came to Germanic languages from Latin before they arrived in England, as the late Roman Empire became Christianized and some religious terms spread throughout Europe. When the first Germanic speakers arrived in England from what is now Denmark and northern Germany, they brought with them a few words taken from Latin as part of what became the first recorded English vocabulary.
Compression of compounds or syllables over time is frequently seen in words. That’s how Christ’s mass became Christmas, just as holiday comes from holy day.
Yule
Yule was the name of the ancient winter solstice festival that pre-dated Christianity. In some ways the old overlapped with the new, and as the Christmas holiday became the most important December religious observance in Medieval England, it displaced pagan celebrations, and the older term began to be used with the new meaning. Yuletide means the Christmas season.
Tidings
It could be taken to mean “wishes” or “greetings,” with a general sense of “best wishes to you” or “happy greetings to you”—logical for the circumstances of a holiday song. But tidings really means “news” or, according to Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary of 1755, “an account of something that has happened.”
Tidings is connected to the verb betide, another archaism, best known in the phrase “woe betide them,” meaning “may sadness befall them” or “may sadness happen to them.” Betide means “to happen to” and tidings are “happenings” or “news.”
It’s no coincidence that tidings brings to mind Yuletide and Christmastide or even Eastertide. Tide here means an ecclesiastical anniversary or festival or its season, so Yuletide is when Yule “happens.”
Merry
Merry dates back to Old English, in use before the 12th century.
In the song, “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” merry describes the “rest” and not the “gentlemen.” It really means “may you gentlemen rest happily,” and not “may you happy gentlemen now rest.” Think of merry here as merrily, since, in this case, merry is an (archaic) adverb.
Hark
Hark and its older relative hearken mean “to listen.” Hark is most famously used in the Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” the first line of which could be restated as “Listen to the messenger angels who are singing.” Hark is usually used, as it is here, in the imperative, as a command.
Both hark and hearken are still in current use in the phrases hark back to or hearken back to, which mean “to return to or remember (something in the past)” or “to look or seem like (something in the past).”
These terms have mostly lost the literal meaning of “listen,” replacing it with “remember.” They derive from the call “hark back,” formerly used when hunting with dogs, meaning to return along the path or retrace the route when a scent is lost. The current meaning derives from the metaphor of seeking an earlier path.
Auld lang syne
The end of the Christmas season for many is New Year’s Eve, and the saying auld lang syne, from the poem and the song, is heard and seen everywhere.
The words are from Scots, and literally mean “old long ago” or “old long since.” The phrase is used to mean “the good old times” that we reflect upon at New Year’s.
Thank you for celebrating at the Verbihund Café!
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Yule was a new one for me, that I just learned the real meaning of this Winter Solstice.
Happy Holidays, Kate!♥️💚