Eastermonth

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Calque of Old English Ēastermōnaþ (April, literally Easter-month), equivalent to Easter +‎ month. Cognate with Old Dutch ōstermānoth (April), German Ostermonat (April, literally Easter-month) (cp. German Ostermond (April, literally Easter-moon)).

Proper noun

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Eastermonth

  1. (poetic) The typical month of the Paschal cycle; Paschal month; the month in which Easter typically occurs; April.
    • 1807, The churchman's magazine:
      It is pretended that it is a heathen institution, or copied from a heathen institution; which reflection is derived from the circumstance of there having been a goddess called by different writers Aoster, Eoster, Eostre, Oster, or Easter, whose feast was celebrated in the month of April, which was thence called Easter Month.
    • 1865, The Bromley record and monthly advertiser:
      Charlemagne called April the Easter month, because it is the month in which Easter usually falls.
    • 1883, Dorcas magazine:
      April, the "Easter month" of the Saxon, the season of renewed life in the outside world, is, by some nations, reckoned as the beginning of the new year.
    • 1900, Georg Herzfeld, Original series:
      When the month that we call Eastermonth is over, then the night lasts ten hours and the day fourteen hours.
    • 1903, New York City mission monthly:
      On this Easter month we have for several years sent out to the friends of our Society a little booklet of real pictures, showing some of the many lines of our work among the poor.
    • 2003, Cyril Roy Hart, Learning and culture in late Anglo-Saxon England:
      However, we find nineteen [and five] nights from the time that Eastermonth comes, the cycle revolves eke to the day when eager with song fervent with words we worship, [...]
    • 2009, James Earle Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland:
      In the meantime, the two systems often produced an identical Easter – when a full moon did not occur in the gap between 21 and 24 March (which delayed the Easter month in the Insular reckoning by another lunar cycle), [...]