Sabbath

Sabbath

Noun · /ˈsæbəθ/ · the weekly day of religious rest; any day of complete rest

Definition

The Sabbath is the weekly day of rest observed in several major religions. In Judaism, the Sabbath runs from Friday sundown to Saturday nightfall and is considered the holiest day of the week — a day of complete cessation from work, dedicated to rest, prayer, and family. In Christianity, Sunday is traditionally observed as the Sabbath or Lord's Day. In Islam, Friday is a day of congregational prayer, though not a full rest day in the same sense. More broadly in English, sabbath or sabbatical can mean any enforced period of rest or withdrawal from regular work — a sabbatical year, for instance.

Origin

From Hebrew shabbat, meaning to rest or to cease, from the root shavat. It entered English through Latin sabbatum and Old French sabbat. The concept appears in the Book of Genesis, where God rests on the seventh day after creation, establishing the Sabbath as a divine pattern. The word has been in English since the Old English period, borrowed through ecclesiastical Latin alongside the spread of Christianity.