This week’s theme
Biblical people and places that became words

This week’s words
Goshen
christen
Sodom
Rechabite
tower of Babel

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(REK-uh-byt)

MEANING:

noun:
1. One who abstains from intoxicating drinks.
2. One who lives in tents.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Rechabites, a biblical clan named after the patriarch Rechab, whose members were commanded to not drink, not live in houses (instead live in tents), and not cultivate fields. Earliest documented use: 1382.

NOTES:

An Independent Order of Rechabites was founded in England in 1835 as a temperance movement. It’s not known why it didn’t go for full compliance with the biblical tenets, and discourage living in houses and cultivating land as well. Instead, they call their lodges tents. It’s also unknown why they don’t just call wine lemonade.

The English language is not dry when it comes to words related to temperance. Besides Rechabite and teetotal, there are also aquabib and nephalism.

USAGE:

“St Kilda [Football Club] has a crazy past. Party boys, thugs, mergers, sackings, cash flows as dry as a rechabite’s barbie.”^*
Patrick Smith; St Kilda up the Creek With No Name; The Age (Melbourne, Australia); Aug 18, 1998.
^*Australianism for a barbecue

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: