![]() ![]() Careful! This is a literary expression so unless you want to sound like an old book, you’d better avoid it. ‘This was once a Roman road in the days of yore.’ (a long time ago). Yore – always of yore, meaning ‘of a long time ago’, e.g. Olden – from a long time ago (always used with a noun), e.g. As with many other words in English, this ‘new’ meaning is more used now and the original meaning is less known. ‘G ay’ as an adjective meaning “ homosexual” goes back at least to the late 1930s. A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer, a gay house a brothel. The word gay has had sexual connotations since the 17th century. ![]() Gay – although nowadays the word is commonly used to mean ‘homosexual’, its original meaning is ‘merry’, ‘lively” and ‘bright’. It was later Christianized, resulting in the term “ Christmastide” – that’s how we got Yule-tide in this song. Yule-tide – Yule is the modern version of the Old English words ġéol indicating the pre-Christian 12-day festival of “Yule”, observed by the Germanic peoples celebrating the god Odin. I’m going to have myself a nice cup of tea! Have yourself – ‘have’ means ‘enjoy’ here and the ‘yourself’ adds emphasis to this expression, e.g. The lyrics to this song are quite simple but they contain a few interesting words and expressions: ![]()
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