noel

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The Word of the Day for December 25 is:

noel   \noh-EL\   noun
    *1 : a Christmas carol
     2 capitalized : Christmas

Example sentence:
     Between the 17th and 19th centuries, sheet music 
publishers printed noels that often paired a semireligious text 
with a familiar Christmas melody.

Did you know?
     Noels were being sung for centuries before the word found 
its way into our language in the 1800s. English speakers 
borrowed "noel" from French. But French speakers didn't coin 
the term; they borrowed it from the Latin "natalis," 
meaning "birthday" or "natal." (That's also a relative of the 
English word "natal," meaning "relating to birth.") "Natalis" 
in turn traces to "nasci" ("to be born"), which is an ancestor 
of various English words, including "nation," "native," 
and "nature."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.