Etymology

burnt offering

burnt of·fer·ing

Today it means: A slaughtered animal offered and burnt on an altar as an atonement for sin. Full definition →

Middle English brend offring
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The story

  1. Middle English · inherited frombrend offring
  2. English todayburnt offering

PIE word *h₁epi From Middle English brend offring, brend offringe, from brend (past participle of brennen (“to burn”)) + offring, offringe (“presentation of something as a religious offering; offering presented to God or another deity”), used in biblical texts to translate Late Latin holocaustum (“burnt offering wholly consumed by fire”) in the Vulgate version of the Bible. The English term is analysable as burnt + offering.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.