nativity

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English nativite,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Anglo-Norman nativite and Old French nativité,^[5][6][7][8] and partly directly borrowed from Latin nātīvitās (“birth, origin”),^[5][2] from nātīvus (“born, native”),^[6][5][3][9] with the suffix -tās; compare -ity.^[5][7] The earliest English form, late Old English nativiteð in the Peterborough Chronicle for 1105, is from the earlier French form nativited.^[6][7][10] In French the word meant the feast of Christ's birth and the birth of Jesus from the early 12th century, and birth or birthday from the late 12th;^[5] the Anglo-Norman word is recorded from the early 12th century.^[11] The Latin noun meant birth or origin from the 2nd century AD, and in Christian Latin also the birth of Jesus, the Virgin Mary or John the Baptist and the feasts of these births.^[5] The OED compares navidad, natività and natividade.^[5] Klein notes that naïveté is a doublet of the word.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The feast of the birth of Christ, Christmas Day: 1105, in the Peterborough continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.^[5][7] Etymonline dates it to the early 12th century, as the name of the feast.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The word came into English as the name of a church feast, and the OED records the feasts of the birth of the Virgin Mary and of John the Baptist under the same sense.^[5][12] From about 1350 it named the birth of Jesus itself,^[5] and since Chaucer's time a person's birth;^[5][6] Chaucer uses it six times.^[13] The Middle English Dictionary shows it also for birth as the time when inherited and astrological traits are fixed,^[2] and in Gower's Confessio Amantis it meant a horoscope, a sense now rare.^[5][4] The meaning "place or conditions of one's birth", and so nationality, followed in the 15th century,^[5] and the figurative sense of the origin or beginning of something before 1425.^[5] In art, a nativity has been a painting or other work showing the birth of Jesus since 1646.^[5][14] Johnson (1755) listed "birth" and "time, place, or manner of birth".^[15] In medieval British Latin and Anglo-Norman the word could also mean the status of a person born a serf,^[5][11] a sense found in English from 1609 to 1880.^[5]

Timeline

• 1105 – the feast of the birth of Christ, Christmas.^[5][7]
• c. 1350 – the birth of Jesus.^[5]
• c. 1375 – a person's birth, in Chaucer's Monk's Tale.^[5][6]
• before 1393 – a birthday (obsolete by 1500); a horoscope, in Gower's Confessio Amantis.^[5]
• before 1425 – figuratively, the beginning or origin of something.^[5]
• before 1475 – the place or conditions of one's birth; nationality.^[5]
• 1609 – the condition of being born into servitude (obsolete by 1880).^[5]
• 1646 – a work of art showing the birth of Jesus.^[5]
• 1869 – in botany, the native status of a plant.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. the Nativity: the birth of Jesus.^[14][12][5]
2. the Nativity: the church feast of Christ's birth, Christmas; also a feast of the birth of the Virgin Mary or of John the Baptist.^[14][12][5]
3. A painting or other work of art showing the birth of Jesus; as a modifier, in nativity play and nativity scene.^[14][5]
4. Birth, especially with regard to its time, place or circumstances: They were Scots by nativity.^[14][12][5]
5. (astrology, archaic) A horoscope.^[5][4]
6. (obsolete, 1393–1500) A birthday.^[5][2]

Related words

• natal
• natality
• native
• naive

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
12. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
14. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.