wassail
/ˈwɑseɪl/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.84 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The beverage served during a wassail, especially one made of ale or wine flavoured with spices, sugar, roasted apples, etc.
Countable; Uncountable
verb
To go from house to house at Christmastime, singing carols.
Example Sentences
- "Add ſugar, nutmeg and ginger, / VVith ſtore of ale too; / And thus ye muſt doe / To make the vvaſſaile a ſvvinger."
- "In merry wassail he […] peals his loud song."
- "The victors abandoned themselves to feasting and wassail."
- "A blinding light against a garish blue sky made vision difficult, thanks to the previous night's wassail."
- "Then as dawn brightened and the day broke Grendel's powers of destruction were plain: their wassail was over, they wept to heaven and mourned under morning."
- "Have you done your wassail? 'Tis a handsome, drowsy ditty, I'll assure you."
Etymology
From Middle English wassail, from Old Norse ves heill (“be healthy!”), from the imperative of vesa (“to be”) + heill (“healthy”). The earliest documented use of the term is from the first part of the 12th century CE, in Geoffroy of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (see page's citations).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈwɑseɪl/
- British English: /ˈwɒseɪl/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
wassail bowl
Wassail in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
Frequently Paired Words
hail
Wassail in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)