burnt offering

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English

WOTD – 23 June 2023

Etymology

PIE word
*h₁epi
A 1500–1520 painting of a biblical scene of a burnt offering (sense 1), perhaps depicting Samuel (1 Samuel 7:9), David (2 Samuel 24:25), or Solomon (1 Kings 8:64).
A burnt offering (sense 2) of paper money at Wenshu Temple in Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
A burnt slice of pizza. Overcooked food is sometimes humorously referred to as a “burnt offering” (sense 3).

From Middle English brend offring, brend offringe,[1] from brend (past participle of brennen (“to burn”))[2] + offring, offringe (“presentation of something as a religious offering; offering presented to God or another deity”),[3] used in biblical texts to translate Late Latin holocaustum (“burnt offering wholly consumed by fire”) in the Vulgate version of the Bible.[4] The English term is analysable as burnt +‎ offering.

Pronunciation

Noun

burnt offering (plural burnt offerings)

  2. (biblical) A slaughtered animal offered and burnt on an altar as an atonement for sin.
    • 1535 October 14 (Gregorian calendar), Myles Coverdale, transl., Biblia: The Byble, […] (Coverdale Bible), [Cologne or Marburg]: [Eucharius Cervicornus and Johannes Soter?], →OCLC, Job j:[5], folio i, recto, column 2:
      […] Job ſent for them, and clenſed them agayne, ſtode vp early, and offred for eueryone a brẽtofferinge [brentofferinge].
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Jeremiah 14:12, column 2:
      When they faſt I will not heare their crie, and when they offer burnt offering and an oblation I wil not accept them: but I will conſume them by the ſword, and by the famine, and by the peſtilence.
  4. (religion, by extension) Any similar sacrifice to a deity or deities, or to a deceased person.
  6. (humorous) Overcooked food.
    • 1991, Sara Minwel Tibbott, Baking in Wales, page 21:
      A cooler oven would give heavy, doughy loaves while a hotter oven would provide the family with the inevitable burnt offerings.

Translations

References

  1. ^ “burnt offering, n.”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from Stuart Berg Flexner, editor in chief, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1993, →ISBN.
  2. ^ “brend offering” under “brennen, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  3. ^ “offring(e, ger.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  4. ^ “burnt offering, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, September 2022.

Further reading

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