rosary

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈɹoʊzəɹi/ (US)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin rosārium (“rose garden”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} in Medieval Latin also “garland; string of beads; series of prayers”,^[4] a noun use of the neuter of rosārius “of roses”, from rosa “rose” (see rose).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The devotional sense came through Middle French rosaire.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A rose garden or rose bed (c. 1440 in the OED; about 1440 in Barnhart; mid-15th century in Etymonline).^[7][3][4]

Semantic evolution

The sense “series of prayers” is attested by 1547,^[7][3][4][5] a figurative use of French rosaire “rose garden”, on the notion of a “garden” of prayers;^[3][4] medieval collections were often compared to bouquets, and a prayer book was called hortulus animae, “little garden of the soul”.^[4][3] By the 1590s the word was transferred to the string of beads used to count the prayers (1597).^[4][7] Hendrickson mentions theories that the first beads were of rosewood, or that the name comes from the “Mystical Rose”, a title of the Virgin Mary.^[8] In the 14th century rosary also named a counterfeit coin current in England in the 13th century (1387).^[7][6]

Timeline

• 1387 – a base foreign coin (historical).^[7]
• c. 1440 – a rose garden.^[7][3]
• 1547 – a set of devotions to the Virgin Mary.^[7][3][5]
• 1597 – a string of prayer beads.^[7]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. In the Roman Catholic Church, a devotion to the Virgin Mary consisting of decades of Hail Marys, each preceded by the Lord's Prayer and ended with a doxology, with meditation on the sacred mysteries.
2. A string of beads used to count these prayers.
3. A similar string of beads used for prayer in other religions.
4. (archaic) A rose garden or rose bed.

Word family

• rosarian
• rosary pea

Related words

• rose
• rosarium
• anthology

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File