Halloween Words Explained

Merika · 10-29-2004, 12:02 PM

I enjoyed the new article on the Home Page about the origin of Halloween. Here's some additional information:

Bonfire comes from the words bone and fire ("fire of bones")
and originally indicated a large open-air fire on which
bones were burnt, either as a ceremony (like a funeral) or
for burning heretics or banned books. The Halloween bonfires
were lit to scare away evil spirits. Nowadays, bonfires are
also celebratory - after a day at the beach or for a home-
coming football game.

The word costume came to English via French from Italian for
"fashion" or "custom, habit," from Latin consuetudo/
consuetudinem meaning "custom." Mask also made a trip
through French (masque) from Italian maschera/mascara,
perhaps from Latin masca, "evil spirit, witch."

Ghost comes from an Old English word gast/gost, "spirit,
soul" and has related forms in other West Germanic languages.
These related words appear to be connected with Sanskrit
hea, "anger, fury." Goblin is from French and it may be
related to the German Kobold, a mythological spirit who
haunted homes and lived underground in caves and mines.
Etymologists believe it may be related to Greek kobalos and
to Latin Gobelinus, mischievous spirits. The goblin carries
the connotation of being grotesque and ugly, evil and
malicious. The ghost is just downright scary, being the
supposed soul of a dead person.

A jack-o'-lantern (also jack-a-lantern) is a hollowed-out
pumpkin, originally a turnip, carved into a demonic face and
lit with a candle inside. Light from a candle inserted
inside can be seen flickering through the jack-o'-lantern's
cutout eyes, nose, and usually grotesquely grinning mouth.
The custom originated in the British Isles, with a large
turnip or other vegetable rather than a pumpkin. The original
meaning of the word jack-o'-lantern was "night watchman" or
"man with a lantern," but it took on the Halloween sense by
1837, first in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.

Pumpkin - the large fruit of the plant Cucurbita Pepo - is a
word evolved from the original English spelling of pompeon
or pumpion or pompion to pumkin and finally to pumpkin. The
word pompion came from Latin pepo/peponem from Greek pepon,
"large melon, edible gourd," from another word pepon,
"cooked by the sun; ripe." Another spelling variant is
punkin.

In Old English, witch was actually wicca and originally (c
890) was a man who practiced magic or sorcery, which we now
call wizard. By the year 1000, witch came to be defined as
"a female magician or sorceress."

The colors associated with Halloween are black and orange.
Orange, the color of the jack-o'-lantern, is a symbol of
strength and endurance as well as of autumn and the harvest.
Black is primarily a symbol of death and darkness. The black
of a witch's cloak and the black cat are reminders that
Halloween was once a festival of the dead.

[Courtesy of dictionary.com]