Word of the Day

: October 26, 2018

holy writ

noun HOH-lee-RIT

What It Means

1 often capitalized Holy Writ : Bible

2 : a writing or utterance having unquestionable authority

holy writ in Context

"But just because these people claim to be experts doesn't mean their every utterance should be treated as holy writ." — James Delingpole, The Spectator, 7 Apr. 2018

"Holy Writ is a text we read and engage with fully. In an imaginative appropriation of the text of Scripture, and through the workings of grace, we somehow understand beyond articulation…." — Edward T. Wheeler, Commonweal, 6 Oct. 2017

Did You Know?

Holy Writ has been used in English as a synonym for Bible for more than a thousand years. The term traces to the Venerable Bede, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon scholar, historian, and theologian who wrote a history of England in which he dated events from the birth of Christ. Bede's history was translated from Latin to English around the year 900, and it is in that translated text that we find the earliest evidence for holy writ. William Shakespeare used holy writ in Othello: "Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ." And Alexander Pope used it in his Wife of Bath: "And close the sermon, as beseem'd his wit, with some grave sentence out of holy writ."