Sabbath

How to spell sabbath

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sabbath

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sabbath mean?

1. nounA weekly day set aside for rest and religious observance, traditionally Saturday in Judaism and Sunday in most Christian traditions.

Sabbath in a sentence

• The shop stays closed every sabbath so the family can rest.

• Observant relatives travel to the synagogue before the sabbath begins on Friday evening.

Where does sabbath come from?

Language of origin: Hebrew

The word traces back to the Hebrew shabbath, meaning 'rest' or 'cessation', built on the verb shabath, which literally meant 'to stop' or 'to cease from labour'. In the Jewish tradition it named the seventh day, set aside for rest, and it passed into Greek as sabbaton and into Latin as sabbatum. From Latin it entered Old English as sabat, and the spelling was later restyled to reflect the original double 'b' of the Hebrew and Latin forms. Over time English speakers also applied it to the Christian day of worship, Sunday, while keeping the older sense of the Jewish day from Friday evening to Saturday evening. The same root survives in the word 'sabbatical', the period of paid leave granted to academics, which preserves the underlying idea of stepping back from work; that link is a handy reminder that the spelling carries the doubled 'b'.

How the word is built

• sabb- (from Hebrew shabbath: rest, cessation)
• -ath (noun ending carried over from the original form)