Webster
✕

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Christmas

Christ′mas (krĭs′mas), n. [Christ + mass.] An annual church festival (December 25) and in some States a legal holiday, in memory of the birth of Christ, often celebrated by a particular church service, and also by special gifts, greetings, and hospitality.

Christmas box. (a) A box in which presents are deposited at Christmas. (b) A present or small gratuity given to young people and servants at Christmas; a Christmas gift. — Christmas carol, a carol sung at, or suitable for, Christmas. — Christmas day. Same as Christmas. — Christmas eve, the evening before Christmas. — Christmas fern (Bot.), an evergreen North American fern (Aspidium acrostichoides), which is much used for decoration in winter. — Christmas flower, Christmas rose, the black hellebore, a poisonous plant of the buttercup family, which in Southern Europe often produces beautiful roselike flowers midwinter. — Christmas tree, a small evergreen tree, set up indoors, to be decorated with bonbons, presents, etc., and illuminated on Christmas eve.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.