The nip in the air at night heralds a change in the seasons. Autumn is one of my favorites (I'm big into the transitional seasons), and I'm not alone; "I'm ready for apple picking, pumpkins, bon fires [sic], hoodies, crunchy leaves and halloween!" is one of the hot "LIKES" on facebook right now.
I appreciate the misspelling of bonfire which put forth the thought of where the word bonfire came from. Was it originally bon(good) fire?
Turns out, no. It was originally bone. And there's a reason we associate them with fall. Our predecessors from the British Isles lit "fires in which the bones of slaughtered animals were burned, allegedly a Gaelic tradition of the slaughter season in autumn."
1 comment:
Reminds me of one of my favorite archaic words in English, bellibone. It refers to a pretty woman, and is some Englishman's attempt to pronounce the French belle et bonne. See
Poplollies & Bellibones: A Celebration of Lost Words.
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