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Word for Wednesday: Yule

Our Word for Wednesday theme for December is words you only hear at Christmas.  Over December, we’ve looked at the words carol, tidings and merry. Our final word for 2022 is yule. The words yule and yuletide are old-fashioned terms for Christmas and the festive season which takes place from December 24th to January 6th. The word yuletide dates to the fifteenth century while yule dates to the seventeenth century. Yule comes from the Old English ‘geol’ meaning ‘Chrismastide’, which in comes from an Old Norse name for the winter feast ‘jol’. Some sources propose that the Old Norse e...

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10 Words you only hear at Christmas: Part 1

Here at Spellzone, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And along with the decorations box and that Michael Bublé album, we’re finding ourselves using certain words that only come out at this time of year. Let’s take a closer at some Christmas-related words and where they come from: Carol While the word ‘carol’ can refer to religious hymns from all seasons, many people associate the word with Christmas songs in particular. Around 1300 the word referred to both a ‘joyful song’ and a ‘dance in a ring’, and it came to be used in reference to Christmas hymns from around 1500. ‘Carol’ comes from the Old F...

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