Houselling

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Giving the Eucharist, the sacrament of Holy Communion, to a person who is near death as a final spiritual comfort
2. The act of administering the sacramental bread and wine to someone on their deathbed, in the old Christian tradition
3. Bringing the Lord's Supper to a dying believer so they may receive the sacrament before they pass away

Etymology: Housel is an old English word for the Eucharist, the Christian sacrament of bread and wine, and it comes from a root meaning "holy." Its Old English form, "hūsl," meant both the sacred rite and the consecrated bread itself, and it belongs to a family of Germanic words for sacrifice and offering. Its verb, "hūslian," meant to administer the sacrament to someone, and that verb is the ancestor of the form you have asked about. So "houselling" is the verb's continuous form, describing the act of giving communion. The word shows up in Middle English and survived into the 17th century, when it was common enough in religious writing. In the 19th century, writers revived it deliberately to lend an antique flavour to their prose, which is why it may sound like a fragment of a much older English.