[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]
Word:
Yule
Definition:
noun
Christmas, or the Christmas season.
Origin:
Merriam-Webster--those cherubs with their lackluster effort!--only tell us yule was first used sometime before the 12th century. That's like saying every word existed sometime before today. Safe guess.
Dictionary.com sees Merriam-Webster its 12th century prediction and raises it to the 10th century. They claim yule is born of the same parentage as the Old Norse word jōl.
The OED, the wise sages in all that is old and wordy, tells us that, indeed, yule came about in first known use in Old English style around the year 900--which is to say it looked nothing like it does today. It first appeared in the book Old English Martyrology (because nothing says the Christmas spirit like people being murdered!), specifically in this sentence:
Feowertig daga ær Criste acennisse, þæt is ær geolum.
I know. It looks like something J.R.R. Tolkien wrote while on a bender--but if you're reading this blog right now your ancient ancestors possibly once spoke a sentence very similar to the one above. In this case, the yule used in this Old English version is geolum.
By around 1440, yule started undergoing puberty. In Le Bone Florence of Rome, a medieval chivalric romance, yule appears in the following sentence:
Of seynt Hyllary the churche ys, The twenty day of yowle y wys.
Yule = yowle. We're getting closer.
By about 1500, in a version of the book Merlin, yule evolves again into the following:
The kynge is now deed sithe Martin-masse, and fro hens to yoole is but litill space.
That's damned near borderline Shakespearean, but I can already hear Engineering majors complain the sentence makes no sense still. Nonetheless, over the remaining centuries, yoole becomes yool becomes any variety of spellings, all until we get today's yule.
Most obscure UrbanDictionary.com definitions of 'yule':
1. When some adolescent's voice breaks and it goes high pitched can be measured on a grade of 1 to 10.
3. A move that Soulja Boy created that is displayed in his video where you put your arms straight out to one side and, with your hands in fists, move them up and down and hop the opposite way that your arms are pointing.
5. To thrust hard during sexual intercourse.
6. The act of [Ed.: Well, it's definitely sexual related, I'll say that much.]
7. To thoroughly kick another person's ass or to beat another person indifinitely in a competition of wit and/or skill. This word can also be interchanged for the word shit. It is used negatively to show an opponent that he has been conquered.
Used in a holiday sentence:
1. Someone slice the yule log and let's get dessert rolling here!
| Word Awesomness Scale (1 to 5): Three. Most dictionaries warn it might be confused with you'll. That's lame. |
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