yeartide

yeartide

English

Etymology

From year +‎ tide (“time, occasion”). Compare West Frisian jiertiid (“season”), Dutch jaartijd, jaargetijde (“season”), German Jahreszeit (“season”), Swedish årstid (“season”), Icelandic árstíð (“season”). Compare also English yahrzeit, Yiddish יאָרצײַט‎ (yortsayt).

Noun

yeartide (plural yeartides)

1. (chiefly fantasy) A specific time of year; season.
   • 1907, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Young Israel:

     […] And promised whatever the yeartides would bring To this wish of his friend he would fervently cling.

   • 1958, American Jewish Congress, Judaism:

     Or phylacteries on skulls unyielding, While our river of days flows dark With a yeartide of days, a yeartide of nights Unhallowed, unhallowed?

   • 1985, Percy Grainger, Kay Dreyfus, The farthest north of humanness:

     Peter & 2-Js & I joined in a flower bunch, besides which I also sent her a 15 bob sheaf on my own, with gum-leafage — the sole homish stuff havable here at this yeartide — there among.

2. (rare, nonstandard) A specific time each year; anniversary.
   • 1921, Emma Kenyon Parrish, The golden island:

     A-dream, we rock at home. So, lasting-sweet is sleep : With sails forever furled. Forgot is all the world, And soft the yeartides creep : O sweet, O lasting sleep!

   • 2006, Gene Wolfe, The Wizard: Book Two of The Wizard Knight:

     There will be a tourney in three days, as always at Yeartide. You could enter those events at which you may excel.