Celebrate

Given the time of year, I was thinking about the word "celebrate." It comes up in one of my favorite songs (by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson), not to mention the related form used in KC and the Sunshine Band's "Celebration." But what does the word mean, and where did it come from?

Of course, I realized it sounds like Latin, and etymonline confirms that it comes from celebratus, which meant "much-frequented; kept solemn; famous." Kind of a strange combination of meanings, if you ask me: solemn but popular?

The English verb is first noted in the mid-1400s, meaning "to perform publicly with appropriate rites," originally of the Mass, a usage we still here today.

Celebratus is the past participle of celebrare "assemble to honor," but also "to publish; sing praises of; practice often." And that started out as "to frequent in great numbers," from celeber "frequented, populous, crowded"; before that, its etymology is unknown.

So "celebrate" comes from the idea of a crowded place, a popular place, a place full of people. Somehow that turned into something more solemn, or maybe it was an association because the places that were crowded were places where worship of some sort was happening?

The sense of celebrating someone or something, as etymonline puts it, to "commemorate or honor with demonstrations of joy" began about a hundred years later than the first meaning of general public rites. The even more positive meaning of "make widely known, praise, glorify" is from 1610s.

You can clearly see the connection in all of this to "celebrity," a person who is celebrated, though that usage heard of until the mid-1800s. The condition of celebrity preceded the personage of being a celebrity by close to 250 years. I imagine that's one of those shifts in usage that grammar snobs of the time rejected.