macabre

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˌməˈkɑː.bɹə/, /ˌməˈkɑː.bə/ (UK); /məˈkɑb/, /ˌməˈkɑ.bɹə/ (US)^[1]

Etymology

borrowed from French macabre,^[2][3][1] from the Old French phrase danse Macabre “dance of death”,^[4][5][2] recorded in 1376.^[5] The origin of Macabre is uncertain.^[5][3][1] The most common explanation links it to the Maccabees, the Jewish martyrs of the Bible,^[4][6][1] through Medieval Latin chorea Machabaeorum “dance of the Maccabees”, a phrase favoured by the OED but for which Random House says the evidence is lacking.^[5][3][6] The Maccabees were honoured with a feast in the Western Church, and a passage in 2 Maccabees on prayers for the dead was linked to reverence for the dead.^[4] Other suggestions are a surname, Macabré,^[5] and Arabic maqābir “cemeteries”, through Spanish.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

In English the word first appears in John Lydgate's Daunce of Machabree (about 1430), a translation of the French poem painted under a mural in the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents in Paris, in which Death leads away people of every rank.^[4][5][6] Lydgate thought Macabree was the name of a French author.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

For centuries the word survived only in the name of the dance of death.^[7][6] The adjective “gruesome, horrible”, abstracted from it, appears in English in 1889,^[7][6][2] probably under the influence of French macabre “gruesome” (1842).^[6] The French pronunciation with a silent final -e rests on a misreading of the Middle French forms.^[3]

Timeline

• 1376 – French macabre la dance.^[5]
• about 1430 – Daunce of Machabree, in Lydgate.^[6][4]
• 1598 – the dance of Machabray.^[6]
• 1889 – adjective, “gruesome”.^[7][6][2]
• c. 1920 – noun, “a macabre happening”.^[7]

Modern meaning

Adjective

1. Suggesting the horror of death and decay; gruesome.
2. Having death as its subject, or representing death.

Word family

• macabrely
• danse macabre

Related words

• Maccabee

Usage notes

The American Heritage Dictionary notes that macabre has lost any link with the Maccabees and almost all with the dance of death, but it is still about death.^[4]

References

1. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. [1] [2] [3] [4] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. [1] [2] [3] [4] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
4. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
5. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
7. [1] [2] [3] [4] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press