Eastermonth

English

Alternative forms

• Easter month, Easter Month, Easter-month

Etymology

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

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), [...]