Housels

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. An archaic name for the Eucharist, the Christian sacrament of bread and wine ; to give Communion to a dying or sick person as a priest does
2. In older English, the sacrament of bread and wine in Christian worship ; to administer the Eucharist to a person, especially at the point of death
3. The Eucharist, known in earlier English as the sacred rite of bread and wine ; to bring the sacrament of Communion to someone in a religious ceremony

Etymology: Housels is the third-person singular form of the verb "housel", so the story belongs to the verb and the noun it shares with it. Both descend from Old English "hūsl", meaning the Eucharist itself, and the verb "hūslian", meaning to administer that sacrament. Behind them lies a Proto-Germanic word for sacrifice, which is why the earliest sense of the family is an offering rather than a meal. Cognates in Icelandic, Gothic and Old Swedish show the same root carried across the Germanic languages, each keeping a religious or sacrificial sense. Over the centuries the word narrowed in English. Middle English kept "housel" as the standard term for the rite of communion, and the verb "to housel" meant giving someone the sacrament, often as a final rite for the dying. Its survival in later English owes much to deliberate revival: writers in the 19th century reached back for it as an archaism, which is why it reads as old-fashioned today.

Synonyms: communicate, commune