Before we dive into the etymology of yule, let’s take a look at the definition because – in all honesty – I’ve never known what it meant. From Yule logs to Yuletide, I’ve heard it all my life, but never knew what it technically meant until about ten minutes ago.

It’s just an archaic term for Christmas.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way:

Old English used the term giuli to describe the two months of December and January, which included a multitude of festivities. When Christianity came into the picture, it was specified to describe the 12 days of nativity. Pulling from the Old Norse jol (where the “j” is pronounced like the “y” in you) to describe the same festivities, giuli shortened to geol – as the holiday itself also shortened from 12 days to one. Taking on the same “y” sound as in Old Norse, it eventually turned into yule.

A few points of interest for other languages:

In Scandinavian languages such as Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, the word for Christmas is currently jul, pronounced like yule. In Icelandic, the word is still jol, like in Old Norse. The lack of evolution for the word in Iceland makes sense (and here I’m theorizing) due to the more secluded nature of the island country.

Some say that the Old Norse jol influenced the Old French word for “festive”, jolif, which in turn evolved into joli, meaning “pretty”.

By the way, I thought the twelve days of Christmas was a countdown to Christmas and ended on December 25th. Apparently, it actually starts on December 25th and refers to the time between when Jesus was born and when the Magi arrived bearing gifts!

Merry Christmas, Nerds! See you next Wednesday for more etymology. Don’t forget to comment with words you’d like to see in the following weeks.