Happy Easter to You

Today is Easter Sunday for most Christians, the most glorious day in the liturgical calendar. I looked over the list of words to find a set that would be appropriate for today, and decided to pull from my list of words several that apply to this day and its meaning.

Easter was adumbrated in the Old Testament, but even so as the first Easter Sunday dawned the disciples and followers of Jesus felt acephalous. While the full import of this day is ineffable, it has produced in many a sense of afflatus. Easter is the day that showed that death is not inexpugnable, and that Jesus has risen and now his instauration has him at the right hand of God.

First is the word adumbrate, which means to outline in a shadowy way or foreshadow. It comes from the Latin word adumbratus, which is the past participle of adumbrari, which means to (ad-) shade (umbra, like in umbrella). If you read the words in Psalm 16:10 and Hosea 6:1-3 which are the most important prophecies of Jesus’ resurrection you will see that the word adumbrate applies – they both foreshadow and lack clarity (are shadowy).

The second word today is acephalous. Acephalous comes from the Greek word kephalos, which means the head. In Greek the prefix a- means without (and we still use it that way in words like amoral and atypical). So acephalous means without a head. The disciples and followers felt that their leader, the head of their movement, had been taken away; they were acephalous, and consequently had no idea what direction to head, what to do. And they would continue to act that way pretty much until the ascension and pentacost.

Ineffable comes from Latin, where (as discussed in the blog for Dec. 26) in- is a negative prefix. The –effable (there is no word effable in my dictionary) comes from the Latin prefix ex-, which means out, and fari, which means to speak. Effari in Latin means to speak out, and ineffabilis in Latin means not utterable. There are no words to describe all of what Easter means to the Christian.

Inexpugnable has the same two Latin prefixes (more intact in this word than in ineffable); the other root word is pugnare (from which we get pugnacious) and means to fight. The ex- prefix is an intensive in this instance, so inexpugnable means something that cannot be defeated by force, unyielding or unconquerable.

Afflatus is a word that means an inspiration or powerful impulse in an artistic or poetic sense; in the 1660s when it came from the Latin word for “a breathing upon” (afflatus) it referred to a miraculous communication of supernatural knowledge. There is much artwork and poetry surrounding this day in history.

Instauration is from the Latin instaurare, meaning renew or repeat. Instauration is a noun, and I found no verb or other form of the word in English. It refers to the act of restoring and has an element of renewal or repair.

I hope that this Easter you get a sense of the ineffable, instauration, and some afflatus, too.