Today’s word of the day is anniversary. Anniversary is a noun, pronounced / ˌæn əˈvɜr sə ri / (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anniversary), that means “A day celebrated as it returns in the course of the year,” or “The act of celebration, or performance, in honour of the anniversary day” https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=anniversary). Merriam-Webster adds, “broadly : a date that follows such an event by a specified period of time measured in units other than years” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anniversary).

That M-W definition is curious because of the word’s etymology. According to Etymonline.com, it appears in English “c. 1200, ‘year-day, annual return of a certain date in the year,’ originally especially of the day of a person’s death or a saint’s martyrdom, from Medieval Latin anniversarium, noun from Latin anniversaries (adj.) ‘returning annually,’ from annus (genitive anni) ‘year’ (see annual (adj.)) + versus, past participle of vertere ‘to turn’ (from PIE root *wer- (2) ‘to turn, bend’).

“The adjective came to be used as a noun in Church Latin via anniversaria dies in reference to saints’ days. Anniversary as an adjective in English is from mid-15c. An Old English word for ‘anniversary’ (n.) was mynddæg, literally ‘mind-day’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=anniversary). So originally the word means something that comes around once a year, but it undergoes a little bit of linguistic broadening to mean the celebration of a particular date even if that celebration is less than a year from the original thing.

Today will be short and, hopefully, sweet. Today is my and my wife’s 47^th anniversary. We got married in 1978 at the Brevard Davidson River Presbyterian Church, with the service conducted by my father, the Reverend Dr. Herman W. Schleifer, Jr. It’s been a mostly very happy 47 years.

The image is of me and my wife on our anniversary in 2012, 13 years ago. She looks the same today.