🇬🇧 The Spellbinding Origins of Halloween Words

October is finally here, and you know what that means – Halloween!
So, first off… Happy spooky season!

You might already know this, but contrary to popular belief, it’s not an American holiday. Its origins trace back to the Celts, and it was celebrated in Ireland over 2,000 years ago as it marked the end of harvest and the start of long winter nights. As a matter of fact, we can find references and variations to this holiday in different parts of Europe, like Scotland (Samhain), northern Spain and northern Italy, Mexico, and even some parts of Asia, for example, the Philippines.

It was believed that on the night between 31st October and 1st November, the veil that separated the world of the living from that of the dead became so thin that souls could come back to Earth. In order to ward them off, people used to wear costumes and carve turnips to stop evil spirits from coming into the house (pumpkin carving came later, when the Irish moved to America).

The etymology of some of the words we tend to use during this period is quite interesting, so here is a brief history of the most common…

HALLOWEEN
Of course, we begin with Halloween: it is known that it derives from “All-Hallow-Even”, a Christian festivity that became entwined with the pagan one. “Hallow” means saint or holy person, while “Even” is old English for eve, the day before a festival – usually a religious one. One of the earliest uses of the word can be found in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (‘All-hallond-Eve’) and in Two Gentlemen of Verona (‘Hallowmas’), when Speed accuses Valentine:
To speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas.
(Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 2, Scene 1)
We can also find it in Robert Burns’ poem Hallowe’en (1785), but the modern form only became popular in the 1700s, losing the hyphen and apostrophe with time.

PUMPKIN and JACK-O’-LANTERN
Pumpkins are the main symbol of Halloween, and the word comes from the French “pompon”, which entered the English vocabulary in the Middle Ages. The modern version we have today was created using the suffix “-kin”, which the OED claims may come from Dutch.

What is interesting about this word is the pronunciation: some English speakers pronounce it “punking” or “punkin”, and there are also differences between American and British English.

Pumpkins usually go hand-in-hand with Jack-O’-Lantern, a name that comes from an old Irish folktale about a man, Stingy Jack, who had a run-in with the devil and had to spend eternity wandering the Earth with a lit turnip. This tale spread to other areas, and the ghostly lights that would appear in marshes or swamps (Will-o’-the-wisp in Scotland, ignis fatuus in other places) were attributed to him being on his evening walk. However, a different etymology traces jack-o’-lantern back to the nickname that was given to watchmen in the 1660s.

HAUNT
Another word that comes from French is haunt, “hanter”, which meant to practice something or frequent a place habitually. In English, it has retained the latter meaning, but in modern English (from the 1500s) it can also mean molesting, troubling, or distracting. Again, we can see the earliest reference in Shakespeare, this time in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when Oberon says:
How now, mad spirit!
What night-rule now about this haunted grove?
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene II)
Today, we can easily say it has a more negative connotation than its original meaning.

GHOST
Ghost comes from the Germanic language, and in old English, the term “gàst” meant soul or spirit; in fact, we can still find this meaning in the religious expression “the Holy Ghost”. The modern sense of the word can, again, be found in literature first. This time not in Shakespeare’s work, but Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women, where it is spelt “gost”. The ‘h’ was added later and is probably due to the influence of the Flemish word “gheest”.

BOO
Boo has an interesting story: used as a verb, it was spelt with one ‘O’ and it was the onomatopoeic verb which described the sound made by cows. The verb fell into disuse in the 1600s, but the cry “bo!” was still used to scare someone. The modern spelling can be traced back to the 19th century, and it was, and still is, used as an exclamation. However, there is one occasion in which it is still used as a verb, that is in the phrase ‘to say boo to a goose’, which means to speak up for oneself.

SPOOKY
Spooky is a word that has not really changed its meaning since it was first introduced to the English language. Like many words, it is borrowed from another language, in this case Dutch (“spook”), and it refers to an apparition or a ghost. We first encounter it in American English in 1801 and in British English about half a century later. It is a colloquial term that faded in noun form, but the adjective and verb that we still use today remain.

TRICK-OR-TREAT
Trick-or-treat is a modern term for souling (or mumming), a practice dating back to the Middle Ages and common in England until the 1930s. It is called that because children and poor people would go from house to house around All Saints Day to receive soul cakes. Its fading coincides with the origins of trick-or-treating in the USA during the early 20th century, when souling and guising – a Scottish word used to reference dressing up and going from house to house – were coming together with decorating houses with pumpkins, thanks to various immigrants, especially Irish and Scottish. Because of the nature of the expression, we can say that it was used by children well before we find it in print for the first time in 1927 in Canada.

WITCH
Unsurprisingly, it comes from the old English “wicca”, used to refer to the pagan religion of Wicca; its spooky origin, however, might be related to the Proto-Indo-European prefix weg-, “to be strong”. Wicca was also the word that referred to women magicians, as men were called witches throughout until the 20th century. In the 15th century, we have the earliest example of the word used to refer to a woman who is not very liked, rather than one who has magic powers.

VAMPIRE
The earliest use of the word vampire can be found in a story called Travels of Three English Gentlemen, allegedly a true story, which dates back to 1734. The word itself comes from French and Serbian; however, there is a theory that it comes from the Kazan Tatar language and originates from the word “ubyr”, meaning witch.