Reformacioun

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The process of changing and improving an institution or practice to correct its faults ; the sixteenth-century movement that broke with the Roman Church and gave rise to Protestant churches
2. Making a system or custom better by correcting its abuses ; the great sixteenth-century European movement that sought to reshape Western Christianity and split it from Rome
3. An act of amending a flawed institution or behavior for the better ; the church-reshaping campaign of the 1500s that led to the Protestant denominations

Etymology: Reformacioun is a Middle English spelling of "reformation," and it shows how the word was spelled before English spelling standardized. It came into English in the 14th century from Old French "reformacion," which in turn came from Latin "reformatio," a noun built from "re-" (again, back) and "formare" (to shape, from "forma," form). The original sense was simply the act of giving something a new shape or restoring it to a better condition. The word carried that sense of restoring to proper form into religious life, where it was used for the restoration of the Church to its supposed earlier purity. The most famous instance is the sixteenth-century break from Rome, which English writers of the period called the Reformation. The spelling "reformacioun" with its -cioun ending reflects Anglo-Norman and Middle English habits, and it is closer to the French source than the modern spelling is.