{"id":7013,"date":"2025-06-24T19:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T19:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=7013"},"modified":"2025-06-24T19:04:58","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T19:04:58","slug":"word-of-the-day-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2025\/06\/24\/word-of-the-day-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Today\u2019s word of the day is <em>anniversary<\/em>. Anniversary is a noun, pronounced \/ \u02cc\u00e6n \u0259\u02c8v\u025cr s\u0259 ri \/ (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/anniversary), that means \u201cA day celebrated as it returns in the course of the year,\u201d or \u201cThe act of celebration, or performance, in honour of the anniversary day\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/views\/search.php?term=anniversary\">https:\/\/johnsonsdictionaryonline.com\/views\/search.php?term=anniversary<\/a>). Merriam-Webster adds, \u201c<em>broadly<\/em> : a date that follows such an event by a specified period of time measured in units other than years\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/anniversary\">https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/anniversary<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That M-W definition is curious because of the word\u2019s etymology. According to Etymonline.com, it appears in English \u201cc. 1200, \u2018year-day, annual return of a certain date in the year,\u2019 originally especially of the day of a person&#8217;s death or a saint&#8217;s martyrdom, from Medieval Latin <em>anniversarium<\/em>, noun from Latin <em>anniversaries<\/em> (adj.) \u2018returning annually,\u2019 from <em>annus<\/em> (genitive <em>anni<\/em>) \u2018year\u2019 (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/word\/annual#etymonline_v_13479\"><strong>annual<\/strong><\/a> (adj.)) + <em>versus<\/em>, past participle of <em>vertere<\/em> \u2018to turn\u2019 (from PIE root <a href=\"https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/word\/*wer-#etymonline_v_52647\"><strong>*wer-<\/strong><\/a> (2) \u2018to turn, bend\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe adjective came to be used as a noun in Church Latin via <em>anniversaria dies<\/em> in reference to saints&#8217; days. <em>Anniversary<\/em> as an adjective in English is from mid-15c. An Old English word for \u2018<em>anniversary<\/em>\u2019 (n.) was <em>myndd\u00e6g<\/em>, literally \u2018mind-day\u2019\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=anniversary\">https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=anniversary<\/a>). 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today will be short and, hopefully, sweet. Today is my and my wife\u2019s 47<sup>th<\/sup> 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\u2019s been a mostly very happy 47 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The image is of me and my wife on our anniversary in 2012, 13 years ago. She looks the same today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s word of the day is anniversary. Anniversary is a noun, pronounced \/ \u02cc\u00e6n \u0259\u02c8v\u025cr s\u0259 ri \/ (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/anniversary), that means \u201cA day celebrated as it returns in the course [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[813,238,395,284],"class_list":["post-7013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-anniversary","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-linguistics","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7015,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions\/7015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}