Atlantic Books

Atlantic Books

Locate me
FR

Word for Word

by

Easter eggs

As the long-weekend approaches, Jon Tattrie shares the lesser known meanings of many words popular this time of year

As the spring sun surges in the east, we turn with worshipful hearts toward her resurrected heat, finding peace in the knowledge that our winter of suffering is finished.

So did our linguistic ancestors, both Christian and pagan. An archeological excavation of Easter’s language connects us directly toward those who gathered in springs long forgotten.

An Easter egg is a tasty chocolate treat, but it’s also a treat hidden inside a piece of pop culture. The Urban Dictionary defines it as “a hidden item placed in a movie, television show, or otherwise visual media for close watchers.” It comes from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where the cast held an Easter egg hunt, but found few.

Easter, the Christian spring holiday, brings baskets of both kinds of eggs.

The word Easter builds on east, the direction, a word that goes all the way back to the ancient Proto-Indo-European language spoken thousands of years ago, where it was austron. The same root word came through Latin as aurora, which means dawn, and sits in Austria, which means eastern borderland.

According to the Venerable Bede, an English monk and writer in the 600s, the Christian festival supplanted the pagan festival celebrating the goddess Eastre. Her worshippers gathered on the spring equinox and looked to the east, and its rising sun, for her name. Early Christian missionaries could be a pragmatic bunch and likely repurposed an already popular holiday for the Christian one, just as they did with Christmas. Many Christians still gather for sunrise services on Easter Sunday, unknowingly echoing the ancient pagan rite.

Egg is an odd little word. It seems simple – it comes out of a chicken. But why do we egg someone on? That second meaning comes from the Viking word eggja, meaning to incite, and is cognate with edge.

Holy Week takes Christians through the final days of Jesus. It starts with him heading for Jerusalem (meaning foundation of peace – shalom means peace, and it also crops up in the middle of the Muslim greeting As-salamu alaykum).

Jesus gathers his disciples for the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday. “Maundy” comes from the Latin mandatum, which gives us mandate, which gives us commandment. It’s called Maundy Thursday because Jesus gave a “new commandment” to his followers: “Love one another.”

Good Friday appears a blasphemous way to describe the day the Romans tortured Jesus to death, but it’s not. Good comes from an ancient root word meaning to unite (and is related to gather), and for several centuries good also meant holy: it is holy to bring people together. So Good Friday means Holy Friday. Crucify is a fancy Latin-based way of saying fasted to a cross – it’s sort of like “cross-ify.”

These last days are also known as the Passion of the Christ. This seems strange – there is no romance to this terrible beating. That’s because passion comes from the Latin pati, meaning to suffer, and we see it more clearly in compassionate, which means to suffer together (as does compatible). The extreme emotions present in suffering unmoored the word from pain and drifted it along to its modern meaning of lust.

This etymology helps us understand why long-married couples often cite compatibility as the key to a good relationship. Life brings us suffering. To propose marriage is to ask another to share that burden with you. At least with this definition, you can be sure the passion will never go out of your marriage.

On Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate the resurrection. The second part of that word is cognate with surge, and both come from the Latin word surgere, meaning to rise. If you add the prefix “re” to mean again, you get resurrection, meaning to surge again, or to rise again.

The Easter season ends 50 days later with Pentecost, which comes from the Greek pentekoste, meaning just that – the fiftieth day.

So this Easter, turn your holy hearts to the east and celebrate resurgent life as the suffering snow melts and life rises again from the reborn land.

by

Word for Word is a new monthly column illuminating the origins of words we use every day. Please let us know what you think in the comments box below or email your feedback to kim@atlanticpublishers.ca

colourfulcalendar

We bury the old gods in our language, using their tombstones to mark the cycle of the years

Canada’s time in Afghanistan made us familiar with the spring fighting season, when the winter lull ends and enemies clash once more.

The world was much the same 2,000 years ago, when Roman Legions attacked enemies in the first month of spring, which was originally also the first month of their year. The Romans named the martial month after the god of war, Mars, to flatter him and increase their chances of victory.

Mars ranked second only to Jupiter and also served as the god of farming. Latin-speaking Romans called the month mensis Martius and over the centuries English speakers shaved that down to March. French, which began as a dialect of Latin, kept the original spelling for their month Mars. (The war god also gave us “martial.”)

TS Eliot called April the cruelest month, but the name seems to have originally come from the Latin word aperire, meaning to open or bloom. (Your camera’s “aperture” springs from the same root, as does “aperitif,” your opening drink before a meal.)

Another theory holds that the Romans probably named their second month for Aphrilis, a Latin version of Aphrodite, the repurposed Greek love goddess. (She also gave us aphrodisiac.)

May is another Roman gift, originating as mensis Maius, or the month of Maia (menstruation comes from mensis, which means monthly). Maia was worshipped as the deity of growth.

Another theory holds that May is named not for the goddess, but for the Latin maiores, meaning “ancestors”. Under that theory, May’s celebration of ancestors is matched by mensis Iuniores the next month, a month for the “younger ones,” with June emerging from centuries of mispronunciation. (“Junior” comes from the same root.)

Others argue June is named for Juno, the Roman goddess of Canadian music. Juno holds the dual titles of sister and wife of Jupiter, the most important god in the Roman pantheon (a compound of two Latin words: pan for all and theos for gods).

July displays the eternal glory available to tyrants. Breaking Bad anti-hero Walter White demanded his enemies, “Say my name,” but his nominal ambition is dwarfed by Julius Caesar. Before Christ was born, Caesar demanded the whole world say his name. Caesar reformed the calendar in 46 BC and named the fifth month for himself. Dutifully, under the warm summer skies of our lives, we invoke the name of Rome’s greatest tyrant over and over: July comes from Julius.

The tyrannical hold on summer continues in August, when we unwittingly pay tribute to the great Augustus Caesar, successor to Julius.

I think the month-namers grew bored here, because they run out the year with months called Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth month respectively. In Latin, that’s september, october, novembris and december. (That last one gave us several English words, including decimal, decimate and decade.)

And there you have it: the origins of all the months of the year.

April Fools!

Of course we’re missing our first few months. When Caesar redid the calendar, he moved the start of the year to January 1 and named it for Janus, god of doors and gates and owner of two faces: one to look back on the setting year, and one to look ahead to the rising year. Previously, Romans didn’t bother naming the bleak winter months.

Some parts of Europe didn’t adapt their calendars until the 1500s and 1700s. Those who continued to celebrate the new year in late March or at the start of April were derided as April Fools.

The origins of our last month, February, offers solace to the lonely hearts enduring Valentine’s Day. The Romans named it for Februarius, the festival of spiritual purification.