It’s Easter — a day of rebirth — and it’s undoubtedly one of the most celebrated days of the year if you’re Christian. I took a minute to look up the word “Easter” in the dictionary because I’m interested in the origins of words. Dictionary.com says that the word stems from “aus” in Indo-European roots. Over at Bartleby.com we find this entry for “aus” :

ENTRY:

aus-

DEFINITION:

To shine. Derivatives include east, Easter, and aurora. 1a. east, from Old English ast, east (“the direction of the sunrise”); b. ostmark, from Old High German stan, east. Both a and b from Germanic *aust-. 2a. eastern, from Old English asterne, eastern; b. Ostrogoth, from Late Latin ostro-, eastern. Both a and b from Germanic *austra-. 3. Easter, from Old English astre, Easter, from Germanic *austrn-, dawn. 4. Possibly in Latin auster, the south wind, formally identical to the Germanic forms in 2 and 3, but the semantics are unclear: Austro-1. 5. Probably suffixed form *auss-, dawn, also Indo-European goddess of the dawn. a. aurora, from Latin aurra, dawn; b. eo-, Eos; eosin, from Greek s, dawn. (Pokorny aes- 86.)

Happy Easter

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