A reply concerning holy, etc. and OE halig

Alejandro gret eadmodlice his leorneras and eow segþ,

In reply to Marina's survey of the etymology of holy, holiday and halloween, I thank her for reminding me of that piece of forgotten "homework". A good teacher should not give homework and then forget to correct it. My apologies to those who did work out the etymologies of these words.

I was surprised to read in Marina's post that Old English halig descends from Old Norse heilagr. I checked in the Online Etymology Dictionary myself and found a little error in her explanation. What the dictionary says is that both the OE and ON words are reflexes of a common Germanic word, which is reconstructed as *khailagas.

This dictionary also mentions that the word halig is etymologically connected to the word hal "healthy, sound, whole". Both words had a long /a:/ in OE. In ME /a:/ became /o:/, whence Modern English holy and whole. The word whole today has an archaic meaning "healthy". However, in the North of England and in Scotland, this OE /a:/ did not change, and the word continued to be written with "a". The Modern English alliterative expression hale and healthy contains this a-form from the North. It is in fact a doublet of two words meaning the same thing.

The compound haligdæg existed already in OE. It is only the meanings "religious festival" and "day of recreation" that were created in the 14th century, not the word itself, as Marinas description seems to imply. Until then, including the OE period, it was used to render the Latin (Hebrew) word Sabbath (i.e., "Sunday").

As for the third word, halloween, I have nothing to add. But I would like to draw your attention that Halloween is particularly popular in Scotland.

I am glad that two students have contributed posts to this blog. My comments must not be taken as discouraging. On the contrary, this commentary is an invitation to more posts.

Wesaþ ge hale!
Alejandro Alcaraz