jubilee

Meaning

Noun

• A special year of emancipation supposed to be kept every fifty years, when farming was abandoned and Hebrew slaves were set free.
• A 25th, 40th, 50th, 60th or 70th anniversary.
• A special year (originally held every hundred years, then fifty, and then fewer) in which remission from sin could be granted as well as indulgences upon making a pilgrimage to Rome.
• A time of celebration or rejoicing.
• A period of fifty years; a half-century.
• An occasion of mass manumission from slavery.

Origin

• From Middle English jubile, from Middle French jubile (French jubilé), from Old French jubileus, from Late Latin iūbilaeus. Beyond this point, the etymology is disputed. Traditionally this derives from Ancient Greek ἰωβηλαῖος ("of a jubilee"), from ἰώβηλος, from Hebrew יובל ("ram, ram's horn; jubilee"), presumably because a ram’s horn trumpet was originally used to proclaim the event. More recent scholarship proposes that Late Latin jūbilaeus is from iūbilō, which predates the Vulgate, and that this verb, as well as Middle Irish ilach, English yowl, and Ancient Greek ἰύζω, derived from Proto-Indo-European *yu- ("shout for joy"). In this interpretation, the Hebrew term is either a borrowing from an Indo-European language, or an independent word with no etymological relation to the Latin word.