Word of the Day

: April 21, 2019

resurrection

noun rez-uh-REK-shun

What It Means

1 a (capitalized Resurrection) : the rising of Christ from the dead

b (often capitalized Resurrection) : the rising again to life of all the human dead before the final judgment

c : the state of one risen from the dead

2 : resurgence, revival

resurrection in Context

"After the ceremony was concluded upon the present occasion, I felt all the easier…. [All] the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might be." — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851

"Every few weeks I get a press release declaring that coal is going to make a comeback, but reports of the resurrection have been greatly exaggerated." — Chris Tomlinson, The Houston Chronicle, 11 Mar. 2019

Did You Know?

In the 1300s, speakers of Middle English borrowed resurreccioun from Anglo-French. Originally, the word was used in specific Christian contexts to refer to the rising of Christ from the dead or to the festival celebrating this rising (now known as Easter). By the 1400s, the word was being used in the more general sense of "resurgence" or "revival." The Anglo-French resurreccioun comes from the Late Latin resurrectio ("the act of rising from the dead"), which is derived from the verb resurgere ("to rise from the dead"). In earlier Latin, resurgere meant simply "to rise again" and was formed by attaching the re- prefix to the verb surgere, meaning "to rise." Resurgere is also the source of English resurge and resurgence.