Sugarplum
The night before Christmas was a blur and all over the house, not a single animal was swaying or even moving; the stockings were placed on the chimney with great care, hoping of the fact that St. Nicholas soon would be present/ The children were all tucked up in their beds while images of sugarplums floated through their minds.
Mistletoe
Mistletoe is a mix of misted – which itself was used as a name for a tree-and also it is also the Old English word for “twig,” tan. The exact meaning of mister is just as uncertain as the source of the kissing ritual that is associated with mistletoe. The word is believed to come from two older word: Germanic mist and Germanic mashing. The etymological explanation for mist stems from how mistletoe gets caused through the droppings of birds who consumed the fruits while mash is a reference to the sticky nature of the fruits. Whatever the case it is our belief that we have at least temporarily eliminated the enchantment of being entangled in mistletoe and its fruits.
Gingerbread
It might be surprising to find out that the bread component of gingerbread does not belong to the leavened and baked food. Gingerbread is a Middle English predecessor of the term was called gingered and it referred to a form of ginger paste used in cooking as well as a medicine preparation. Gingered was derived by the Medieval French gingerbread or gingembrat, which is a derivative that comes from gingerer, “ginger.” The bread finalization of the modern form was coined by folk etymology, in which strange words are changed to look like more common words.
Plum pudding
In spite of its name dried fruit is the thing that makes traditional plum pudding so sweetness. Noah Webster defined plum pudding as “pudding containing raisins or currants,” and in his entry on pudding, Webster added “sometimes enriched with raisins and called plum-pudding.” The word”plum” is used as a name since plum used to mean “raisin.” The meaning of the word dates back to the 16th century. It was born out of the increasing use of currants and raisins as substitutes for dried plums, or instead of recipes with prunes. The use of the plum as the raisin eventually went out of fashion throughout the centuries, however it is still a part of the names of the most popular “plum” dishes. In addition to plum pudding, you can also find plum frumenty, plum pottage as well as plum porridge and plum broth, all of which are which are sweetened by currants or raisins not to mention the plum tart from Little Jack Horner’s fame.
Eggnog
The words come from a pastoral poem written by in his Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words were believed as “drawn from the life, from the manners, customs and phraseology of planters … inhabiting the Banks of the Potomac, in Maryland.” Boucher describes the fog-drams in terms of “drams resorted to on the pretense of their protecting from the danger of fogs” and egg-nogs is “a heavy and unwholesome, but not unpalatable, strong drink, made of rum beaten up with the yolks of raw eggs.” Boucher was a priest and philologist who envisioned his glossary to serve as an addition to the glossaries from Noah Webster and Samuel Johnson and, when it comes to eggnog his ideas are admired. It is possible that he provided our readers with the very first instance of eggnog as a printed word.
Bough
If you’re hearing “Deck the hall with boughs of holly,” shoulders and body limbs certainly aren’t on your thoughts. However, bough was employed as a word in Old as well as Middle English as a word to refer to “shoulder” and “leg.”
The word is a reference to Old High German buog of the same meaning, and Sanskrit bahu, a term that means “forearm.” The translation of anatomical bough to branches of trees is a unique feature of the English language and both meanings are employed in the same way. Similar to this is the use of limb to refer to arm or leg and also branches of trees.
Spruce
A typical Christmas trees is the spruce. The name for the tree was employed as a reference in English as a reference to the nation of Prussia The use of the name originated in the form of an alteration of the name of the Anglo-French Prussian country: Price. Many of the goods that were imported from the country- spruce iron, canvas as well as spruce leather — were all thought-of. One among these Prussian or Spruce product was spruce, which was a straight, tall conifer which was a great choice to be used as the mast of ships. Around the mid-way point in the seventeenth century Spruce was used as a name to describe the nation was replaced by Prussia. However, by the time this happened, the term “spruce” had been established as the name given to the tree.
carol
It is thought that the word “carol” comes by some to originate in Late Latin chorale, a term used to describe a choral music which was previously used to describe musicians who played with the chorus playing a reed instruments. This Latin word is traced back to the Greek word choraulein which means “to accompany a chorus on a reed instrument,” which is a mix of the Greek words chorus.