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Definitions: BELTANE |
BELTANENoun1. A festival of the heathen Celts on the first day of May, in the observance of which great bonfires were kindled. It still exists in a modified form in some parts of Scotland and Ireland. 2. The first day of May (Old Style). |
Note: Beltane \Bel"tane\, noun. [from Gaelic expression bealltainn, bealltuinn.]. (Websters 1913) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Literature | Beltane (2 syl.). A festival observed in Ireland on June 21st, and in some parts of Scotland on May Day. A fire is kindled on the hills, and the young people dance round it, and feast on cakes made of milk and eggs. It is supposed to be a relic of the worship of Baal. The word is Gaelic, and means Bel's fire; and the cakes are called beltane-cakes. Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Early Gaelic sources from around the 10th century state that the Druids would create a need-fire on top of a hill on this day and rush the village's cattle through the fires to purify them and bring luck ("Eadar dà theine Bhealltuinn" in Scottish Gaelic, "Bettween two fires of Beltane"). People would also go between the fires to purify themselves. This was echoed throughout history after Christianisation (with regular people instead of Druids creating the need fire) up until the 1950s, while in some places the celebration of Beltane persists, people mainly go between the fires today.
Beltane is a specifically Gaelic holiday, not "Celtic," as other Celtic cultures, such as the Welsh, Bretons, and Gauls, do not celebrate it.
In neopaganism, the name Beltane or Beltaine is used for a sabbat, one of the eight solar holidays, which is celebrated on this day. Although the holiday uses features of the Gaelic Beltane, such as the bale fire, it bears more relation to the Germanic May Day festival, both in its significance (focussing on fertility) and its rituals (such as maypole dancing). Gerald Gardner, the principal originator of the Wiccan religion, referred to the holiday as May Eve.
Among the neopagan sabbats, Beltane is a cross-quarter day; it is celebrated in the northern hemisphere on May 1 and in the southern hemisphere on November 1. Beltane follows Ostara and precedes Midsummer (see the Wheel of the Year).
See also Walpurgis Night.
Beltaine is also the name of a Celtic Doom metal band; see Beltaine (band).
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Beltane."
Crosswords: BELTANE |
| English words defined with "BELTANE": Beltin. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "BELTANE" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "BELTANE" is used about 6 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 6 | 143,867 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
beltane | 67 |
beltane festival | 31 |
beltane festival fire | 9 |
beltane ranch | 9 |
beltane papers | 4 |
beltane fire | 3 |
beltane festival picture | 3 |
beltane ritual | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Misspellings | |
"BELTANE" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Balante, belane, Belanov, Beletuen, Belstone, Beltagne, beltanes, Beltona, Beltranena, Betano, Bettaney, Bilbany, Bleaney, Bultman. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| Words rhyming with "BELTANE" (pronounced 'Bel"tane'): Butane, Cismontane, heptane, Intermontane, octane, Pentane, Quartane, Septane. (additional references) |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: tenable. | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-e-e-l-n-t" | |
-1 letter: baleen, beaten, enable, lateen. | |
-2 letters: abele, anele, betel, blate, bleat, blent, eaten, elate, enate, laten, leant, leben, table, telae. | |
-3 letters: abet, able, alee, ante, bale, bane, bate, bean, beat, been, beet, belt, bene, bent, beta, blae, blat, blet, elan, etna, lane, late, lean, leet, lent, nabe, neat, tael, tale, teal, teel, teen, tela. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-b-e-e-l-n-t" | |
+1 letter: nestable, nettable, rentable, tuneable. | |
+2 letters: blanketed, celebrant, detonable, enterable, stablemen, tenurable, uneatable, untenable. | |
+3 letters: antebellum, babblement, bafflement, battlement, binucleate, blanquette, celebrants, embalmment, extendable, inevitable, injectable, integrable, investable, lamentable, listenable, negotiable, noticeable, oblateness, patentable, penetrable, rabblement, resemblant, returnable, stableness, tabernacle, tenantable, terminable, unbeatable, untestable. | |
+4 letters: babblements, bafflements, balletomane, battlements, beastliness, belatedness, binucleated, blanketlike, blanquettes, celebrating, celebration, connectable, contestable, demountable, detonatable, disablement, embalmments, entablature, exuberantly, fermentable, glabrescent, inalterable, ineluctable, inequitable, inestimable, inflectable, inheritable, injectables, intolerable, langbeinite, libertinage, mentionable, notableness, potableness, presentable, presentably, preventable, rabblements, retrainable, returnables, tabernacled, tabernacles, talebearing, tenableness, treasonable, tunableness, unalterable, undebatable, unelaborate, unelectable, unexcitable, unliberated, unteachable, untraceable, unutterable. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)42 45 4C 54 41 4E 45 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)-... . .-.. - .- -. . |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000010 01000101 01001100 01010100 01000001 01001110 01000101 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)B E L T A N E |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0042 0045 004C 0054 0041 004E 0045 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)36394654354839 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Slideshow | 5. Usage Frequency 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Derivations 8. Rhymes | 9. Anagrams 10. Orthography 11. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
