Sunday, October 23, 2011

Halloween History Countdown - Day 23



Let's do some spooky linguistics for a change.

From Weird! The Complete Book of Halloween Words
Grave comes from the Old English word grafan, "to dig", and refers to the pit or trench that is dug in the ground to hold a corpse. Yard comes from the Old English geard, meaning "fence" or "dwelling".

Cemetery comes from the Latin term caemeterium, but the Romans got that word from the Greek koimeterion, which literally means a dormitory.

No comments:

Post a Comment