Words you need to know that have an Easter connection

Catholic faithful carry the cross along Mombasa streets in the way of the cross procession yesterday. [Maarufu Mohamed, Standard]

The Easter weekend is upon us, so we’ve turned our literary sights to those words with an Easter connection. Got your eggs and your hot cross buns at the ready? Then why not sit back, have a bite to eat, and gorge yourself on these literary facts.

Let’s start, obviously, with Easter itself. The word comes from a Germanic word that is probably cognate with ‘east’, and therefore with ‘dawn’ (with the sun rising at dawn in the east) – thus pointing to the spirit of new beginnings which Easter represents. (Indeed, as well as ‘easterly’, there is also the word Easterly which means ‘of or relating to Easter’.) Bede, in the early eighth century, was the first person to mention the theory that ‘Eostre’, from the same linguistic origin, was a pagan fertility goddess (a theory that is widely rejected). However, Easter obviously does draw on earlier rituals of rebirth and new life celebrated during the spring season, so the link between ‘Easter’ and ‘east’ (and therefore the new beginnings heralded symbolically as well as literally by the dawn) is significant.