Eostre
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A hypothesised West Germanic goddess, supposedly of the spring season, but of uncertain provenance.
"There were also Nature deities, Hrede, the personification of the brightness of Summer, and Eostra, the radiant creature of the Dawn. It will be remembered that it was the worship, not of Balder, but of Eostra, which the Christian missionaries found so deeply imbedded that they adopted her name and transferred it to Easter."
- 2 A neopagan festival celebrated either in March or April to welcome the Spring, also called Ostara or Easter.
Example
More examples"There were also Nature deities, Hrede, the personification of the brightness of Summer, and Eostra, the radiant creature of the Dawn. It will be remembered that it was the worship, not of Balder, but of Eostra, which the Christian missionaries found so deeply imbedded that they adopted her name and transferred it to Easter."
Etymology
A learned borrowing from Old English Ēostre, the Northumbrian variant of West Saxon Ēastre (“a word referring to "the rising dawn" to indicate the season of Spring”) and ēastre (“Easter”), from Proto-West Germanic *austrā, from Proto-Germanic *Austrǭ (“Easter, springtime”). Doublet of Easter.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.