PENTECOST • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Pentecost

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/pˈɛntəkˌɔst/ Listen

noun

Pentecost n.

A solemn festival of the Jews; so called because celebrated on the fiftieth day (seven weeks) after the second day of the Passover (which fell on the sixteenth of the Jewish month Nisan); hence called, also, the Feast of Weeks. At this festival an offering of the first fruits of the harvest was made. By the Jews it was generally regarded as commemorative of the gift of the law on the fiftieth day after the departure from Egypt.

A festival of the Roman Catholic and other churches in commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles; which occurred on the day of Pentecost; called also Whitsunday.

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Etymology of 'Pentecost'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Pentecost" Quotes from Famous Books

... the afternoon of the Feast of Pentecost that news of the death of Charles the Ninth went abroad promptly. To his successor the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by various pious and other observances; and it was on a Whit-Sunday afternoon that curious ...

— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater

... day—it was the eve of Pentecost—I went after Mass to a very lonely spot, where I used to pray very often, and began to read about the feast in the book of a Carthusian; [5] and reading of the marks by which beginners, proficients, and the perfect may know that ...

— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... solemn Feast of Pentecost Arthur the King and his chosen Knights Sat, as we sit, in the Court of Camelot side by side at The Table Round. None made music, none held converse, none knew hunger, none were athirst, Each possessed ...

— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... day of Pentecost this wonderful friendship of Jesus has been spreading wherever the gospel has gone. It has given to the world its Christian homes with their tender affections; it has built hospitals and asylums, and established charitable institutions ...

— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... by the Evangelist to have been a Cyrenian, that is, an inhabitant of Cyrene, a city in North Africa. Strangers from this place are mentioned among those who were present soon after at the Feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Church in tongues of fire. And the probability is that Simon had, in a similar way, come from his distant ...

— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

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