{"id":7217,"date":"2025-12-31T22:47:52","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T22:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=7217"},"modified":"2025-12-31T22:51:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T22:51:25","slug":"word-of-the-day-hogmanay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2025\/12\/31\/word-of-the-day-hogmanay\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Hogmanay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day is Hogmanay. Pronounced \/ \u02cch\u0252g m\u0259\u02c8ne\u026a \/ (with primary stress on the last syllable and secondary stress on the first syllable), it refers to \u201cthe eve of New Year’s Day\u201d or \u201c(lowercase)<\/em> a gift given on Hogmanay\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/hogmanay<\/a>). When I looked up this word on etymonline.com, it gave me the spelling hogmenay, \u201c\u2019last day of December,\u2019 also a refreshment given that day, 1670s, of uncertain origin\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/word\/hogmenay<\/a>). And that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wikipedia has an entry for Hogmanay. It says, \u201cThe etymology of the word is obscure. The earliest proposed etymology comes from the 1693 Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence<\/em>, which held that the term was a corruption of a presumed Ancient Greek: \u1f01\u03b3\u03af\u03b1 \u03bc\u03ae\u03bd\u03b7 (hag\u00ed\u0101 m\u1e17n\u0113<\/em>) and that this meant \u2018holy month\u2019. The three main modern theories derive it from a French, Norse or Gaelic root.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word is first recorded in a Latin entry in 1443 in the West Riding of Yorkshire as hagnonayse<\/em>. The first appearance in Scots language came in 1604 in the records of Elgin, as hagmonay<\/em>. Subsequent 17th-century spellings include Hagmena<\/em> (1677), Hogmynae night<\/em> (1681), and Hagmane<\/em> (1693) in an entry of the Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlthough Hogmanay<\/em> is currently the predominant spelling and pronunciation, several variant spellings and pronunciations have been recorded,\u201d and then it includes a list of spelling variants (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hogmanay<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It next offers this theory: \u201cThe Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> reports this theory, saying that the term is a borrowing of aguillanneuf<\/em> (literally \u2018To the mistletoe be the new year\u2019) a medieval French cry used to welcome the new year consisting of an unknown first element plus \u2018l’an neuf<\/em>\u2019 (\u2018the new year\u2019)\u201d (ibid.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also offers this: \u201cThe word may have come from the Goidelic languages. Frazer and Kelley report a Manx new-year song that begins with the line To-night is New Year’s Night, Hogunnaa<\/em> but did not record the full text in Manx. Kelley himself uses the spelling Og-u-naa… Tro-la-la<\/em> whereas other sources parse this as hog-un-naa<\/em> and give the modern Manx form as Hob dy naa<\/em>. Manx dictionaries though give Hop-tu-Naa<\/em> (Manx pronunciation: [hop\u02b0 t\u03b8u ne\u02d0]), generally glossing it as \u2018Hallowe’en\u2019, same as many of the more Manx-specific folklore collections\u201d (ibid.). The Goidelic languages are one branch of the Celtic languages, the other being Brittanic. Manx is a Gaelic (or Goidelic) language spoken on the Isle of Man, though it is now considered a heritage language, \u201clearned by its speakers at home as children, and difficult to be fully developed because of insufficient input from the social environment\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Heritage_language<\/a>). It nearly died out completely in the 1970s but has since be revitalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some linguists reject the two theories and \u201cinstead suggest that the ultimate source for this word’s Norman French, Scots, and Goidelic variants have a common Norse root\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hogmanay<\/a>). \u201cIt is suggested that the full forms<\/p>\n\n\n\n