Re: Whitsuntide

 Ar an naoiú lá de mí Meitheamh, scríobh Christian Weisgerber:

 > On 2025-06-09, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
 >
 > > Just about all over now. Here it's still Whit Monday, a public holiday
 > > in quite a few European countries; but that's just a modern extension of
 > > Whit Sunday, a public holiday in a somewhat different list of European
 > > countries, and, under its Greek name of Pentecost, in  Greece (of
 > > course) and Iceland (?).
 >
 > German "Pfingsten" is also borrowed from medieval Latin "pentecoste"
 > or such, but heavily reshaped.

David Marjanović, a well-educated Austrian on languagehat.com, does not like
the DWB; I’m not sure why, I find it great, but then I’m not a native speaker,
let alone an educated native speaker. Their (the Grimms’, in the DWB) comment
on Pfingsten is:

  »plur., mhd. phingesten, pfingsten, ein dativ plur. der nach wegfall der
  vorausgehenden präposition (an, vor, ze [den] pfingsten d. h.
  pfingstfeiertagen) als nom. und accus. plur. gebraucht worden und sogar zu
  einem nom. sing. diu pfingsten (liedersaal 2, 637, 30. 3, 387, 25) erstarrt
  ist. vergl. ostern, weihnachten.
  Vulfila hat das griech. πεντεκοστή (nämlich ἡμέρα, der 50. tag nach ostern)
  als paintekustê aufgenommen, welches im ahd. bei Kero 41 mit umdeutschung von
  πέμπε zu fimfchusti (dat. plur. fona fimfchustim), im mhd. mit regelrechter
  verschiebung des anlautes und contraction zu phingeste, pfingst geworden,
  aber wie im nhd. nur in zusammensetzungen erhalten ist. vereinzelt kommt der
  sing. pfingst (mnd. pinkest Schiller-Lübben 3, 329 vom j. 1305) im 15. jahrh.
  vor bei Dief. 423c, dem reime zu lieb z. b. auch bei Lenau (1880) 2, 16;
  sonst erscheint der singular nur (wie schon mhd.) in der erstarrten form des
  dativs plur. als die oder das pfingsten (das sächliche geschlecht bezogen auf
  Fst): ...«

“A dative plural that was used as nominative and accusative plural (even as a
nominative singular) after the loss of the preceding prepositions, compare
Ostern, Weihnachten. Wulfila [c. 311-383, apostle to the Goths] took the greek
πεντεκοστή up as paintekustê, which in Kero [eighth century] with Germanization
of πέμπε became fimifchusti, and then in Middle High German with regular
shifting of the initial sound and contraction became phingeste, pfingst;
however, as in New High German, it was only preserved in compounds.
[translation of the above cut off] [...]”

For anyone curious, the OED supports what my instinct suggested (but what is
not necessarily obvious to monolingual native speakers), that ‘whit’ was a
variant of ‘white’:

  “[late OE. Hwíta Sunnandæᵹ lit. ‘white Sunday’ (found once only and in
  oblique form Hwítan S.); whence app. ON. hvítasunnudagr in the same sense,
  also hvítasunnudagsaptann, -nátt, -vika (ON. hvítadagr ‘white day’,
  hvítadróttinsdagr ‘white Lord’s-day’, hvítadagavika Whitsun week, cannot be
  taken as evidence of an independent Norse origin; they are prob. due to
  Icelandic attempts to obliterate heathen traces from the name of the
  festival). The epithet ‘white’ is generally taken to refer to the ancient
  custom of the wearing of white baptismal robes by the newly-baptized at the
  feast of Pentecost (cf. Dominica in albis, the name of the First Sunday after
  Easter, Low Sunday, given for the same reason). [...]]”

--
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)