eostre
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.08 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A hypothesised West Germanic goddess, supposedly of the spring season, but of uncertain provenance.
Example Sentences
- "There were also Nature deities, Hrede, the personification of the brightness of Summer, and Eostra, the radiant creature of the Dawn. It will be remembered that it was the worship, not of Balder, but of Eostra, which the Christian missionaries found so deeply imbedded that they adopted her name and transferred it to Easter."
Etymology
A learned borrowing from Old English Ēostre, the Northumbrian variant of West Saxon Ēastre (“a word referring to "the rising dawn" to indicate the season of Spring”) and ēastre (“Easter”), from Proto-West Germanic *Austrā, from Proto-Germanic *Austrǭ (“Easter, springtime”). Doublet of Easter.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *Austrā, *Austrǭ
Inflected Forms
Ēostre (alternative)