So…how have I never actually done thanksgiving as a Word of the Week??? I’ve looked into the history of the holiday, but not actually the word. An oversight we shall rectify. 😉
The word thanksgiving as “the act of giving thanks” dates to 1530, with what I hope is a very obvious combination of root words, LOL. Before that, people were obviously still doing that act, but it wasn’t yet one word. Texts from the 1300s talk about giving thanks or even doinge of thankes.
In 1630, there was even introduced a back-formation of the noun, the verb thanksgive. (I don’t think that one stuck around for long, LOL.) Before that? Ahem. Thanking. Yeah, that one we still use, LOL.
Now, in that century when the word came into use but wasn’t yet the “holiday” sense that we know today, it simply meant the literal “give thanks.” But in 1630, the famous dinner at Plymouth gave rise to a new, specific sense: “to publicly give thanks to God for His favors with a celebration.” And by 1670, we had the notion of Thanksgiving Day.
Do you (to my US readers) have big Thanksgiving plans?
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
