Hallowing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of making something holy or sacred by religious or spiritual means
2. A process of sanctifying a place, object, or time through ritual or blessing
3. The dedication of a person, place, or thing as sacred through ceremonial consecration

Etymology: The surprise here is that "hallow" and "holy" are cousins, and "whole" is in the family too. All three descend from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "safe, unharmed," which passed into Proto-Germanic as *hailaz, meaning "whole, safe, hale." From that sense of being intact came the idea of being set apart as sacred. Old English "hālgian" meant "to make holy, sanctify," and Middle English "halwen" carried the same sense into the later language. The verb's history is a pleasing one: "hallowing" is simply the ongoing form of that verb, so it describes the process of sanctifying something rather than a completed state. The root that makes a thing holy is the same one that makes a body whole, which is why the word sits so close to "whole" and "holy" in modern English.

Synonyms: sanctifying, consecrating, blessing, holy