Today, David and I are celebrating our 23rd wedding anniversary!
So, of course, I thought we’d take a look at the word anniversary. That ann- prefix gives us a good idea where it comes from, sharing a root as it does with annual, from the Latin annus, for year. Latin also has anniversarium, from which English directly borrowed the word.
Originally, though, this wasn’t a word used for wedding dates or even birthdays, despite it’s very literal definition of “annual return of a certain date of the year.” Originally, the word was reserved for the day of death, especially martyrdom, of saints!
Who knew?
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.