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”), Yiddish יאָרצײַט (yortsayt). Doublet of yahrzeit.

Noun

yeartide (plural yeartides)

1. (chiefly poetic or 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.

   • 1921, Emma Kenyon Parrish, The Golden Island, page 8:

     And soft the yeartides creep:
     O sweet, O lasting sleep!

   • 1958, American Jewish Congress, Judaism‎^[1]:

     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.

Related terms

• yeartime