Browse Definitions :

Halloween (or Hallowe’en) history, trivia and a quiz

Writing for Business

Which is correct?
_________ is here and you know what that means — cybercriminals have set up bait sites for SEO poisoning.
a. Hallowe’en
b. Halloween


Answer: b., for AP style

Explanation:

“Halloween” is derived from “All Hallows Even.” The “een” at the end is a contraction of “even” (meaning evening) which is why the old spelling for Halloween had an apostrophe.

Halloween is the evening before All Hallows, which means “All Saints Day.” “All Hallows” originated in Old English (ealra hālgena) but the first record of “All Hallows Even” is 1556. The day is still sometimes referred to as “All Hallows Eve” and that is sometimes written as Allhallows Eve.

Some Halloween trivia:
All Saint’s Day was first celebrated in 609, in mid-May, but was moved to November 1 by decree of Pope Gregory IV. The day was reserved for prayer for the newly deceased to help them on their passage to Heaven. November 2 was All Souls’ Day.

The ancient roots of All Hallows are in the Pagan feast of Samhain (pronounced sah-win or sow-win), which marked the culmination of the harvest and the transition to the darker days of winter. At Samhain, it was thought that the veil between worlds was at its thinnest, allowing the dead (and other entities, like fairies) to walk among us.

The origin of trick-or-treating was most likely souling, which involved groups of the poor going from door to door on All Souls’ Day requesting soul cakes, spicy, round shortbreads that the more fortunate baked (or, I suppose, being more fortunate, had the servants bake). Both the act of giving them out and the act of eating them were considered forms of prayer for souls in purgatory. Here’s a soul cake recipe. Bake some — a soul is released from purgatory for each one!

***

Wikipedia provides much more Halloween history.

Michael Fosset offers more tips on AP style on Halloween-related terms.

Looking for some more Halloweeny fun? Try our Halloween geek quiz.

Follow me on Twitter @tao_of_grammar

Dig Deeper on Writing for Business

Networking
  • Telnet

    Telnet is a network protocol used to virtually access a computer and provide a two-way, collaborative and text-based ...

  • big-endian and little-endian

    The term endianness describes the order in which computer memory stores a sequence of bytes.

  • Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)

    Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a protocol that maps dynamic IP addresses to permanent physical machine addresses in a local...

Security
  • Mitre ATT&CK framework

    The Mitre ATT&CK (pronounced miter attack) framework is a free, globally accessible knowledge base that describes the latest ...

  • timing attack

    A timing attack is a type of side-channel attack that exploits the amount of time a computer process runs to gain knowledge about...

  • privileged identity management (PIM)

    Privileged identity management (PIM) is the monitoring and protection of superuser accounts that hold expanded access to an ...

CIO
HRSoftware
  • employee resource group (ERG)

    An employee resource group is a workplace club or more formally realized affinity group organized around a shared interest or ...

  • employee training and development

    Employee training and development is a set of activities and programs designed to enhance the knowledge, skills and abilities of ...

  • employee sentiment analysis

    Employee sentiment analysis is the use of natural language processing and other AI techniques to automatically analyze employee ...

Customer Experience
  • customer profiling

    Customer profiling is the detailed and systematic process of constructing a clear portrait of a company's ideal customer by ...

  • customer insight (consumer insight)

    Customer insight, also known as consumer insight, is the understanding and interpretation of customer data, behaviors and ...

  • buyer persona

    A buyer persona is a composite representation of a specific type of customer in a market segment.

Close