Halloween or Hallowe’en?

Oct 31, 2023
4 min read

Boo! Grab your masks, pumpkins, and bowls of candy. It’s that time of the year again! Halloween is celebrated on October 31 in the US and other parts of the world. Though you’re probably familiar with the spelling Halloween, you might have come across an alternative spelling: Hallowe’en. In this post, we’ll talk about where this spooky holiday came from and other terms you might hear floating around during the spooky season.

What Is the History of Halloween?

We can track the birth of Halloween back to the ancient pagan holiday Samhain, which was practiced by Celtic people in the area that is now considered Ireland, the UK, and northern France. This celebration was held to commemorate the dead and mark the transition between summer and the harvest season.

Common activities practiced during this festival included lighting bonfires and wearing costumes to ward off ghosts that would return to the earth at night. Druids, or Celtic priests, also sacrificed crops and animals.

Meanwhile, in the Roman Empire, a holiday was enacted to celebrate the saints, named All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day (with hallow being an ancient word for saint). After the Roman Empire conquered the Celtic land, All Hallows’ Day merged with Samhain, and the night before the celebration was named All Hallows’ Eve.

How to Write Halloween

Apostrophes have several functions in English: forming possessive nouns, indicating missing letters in contractions, and showing plurals. In the case of Hallowe’en, the apostrophe serves as a contraction. The hallow part of Halloween is a shortened version of All Hallows’ Day, the festival celebrated in commemoration of Christian saints.

In the ninth century, this festival was known as All Hallows’ Eve, with eve being short for evening. This then became shortened to Hallow-e’en and then, as you know, Hallowe’en. In this case, the v became a phantom letter.

How to Write Jack-O’-Lantern

Here’s another Halloween term that looks a bit eerie in modern English. Jack-O’-Lanterns are pumpkins that people carve, often resembling a face, with a flickering candle inside. They’re usually put on doorsteps for decorations around Halloween time. This tradition originated during Samhain, and its intended purpose was to ward off ghostly beings.

In the 17^th century, Jack was a name commonly applied to men whose real names weren’t known. People in the US referred to watchmen, or men walking around at night with lanterns, as Jack-O’-Lanterns.

Like the apostrophe in Hallowe’en, the apostrophe in Jack-O’-Lantern is also used to mark a contraction. In this case, the apostrophe takes the place of the letter f in the word of. Nowadays, it’s common to see this term written without the apostrophe, so both Jack-O’-Lantern and Jack-O-Lantern are acceptable spellings.

How to Write Trick-Or-Treat

Every year, thousands of kids (and big kids) walk around their neighborhoods in costumes, knocking on doors and telling jokes or performing tricks with the threat of pranks if a sweet treat is not provided in return for the trick. In the UK, this is called guising (short for disguising), but the more common name for this activity is trick or treating.

As a noun, trick or treat should not have any hyphens but when it is used as a verb or an adjective, it should be trick-or-treat. You can add -ing, -ed, or -ers to these words depending on the context of the conversation.

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