Saint Agnes's Eve
- noun
- Literature
:
Noche de Santa Inés
- Young women would stay awake on Saint Agnes's Eve believing their dreams would reveal their true love.
Examples
-
On Saint Agnes's Eve, she performed the old ritual in hopes of seeing her future husband in a dream.
-
On Saint Agnes's Eve, people often light candles.
-
The poem describes the magical traditions associated with Saint Agnes's Eve.
-
Many young women celebrate Saint Agnes's Eve with special rituals.
-
On Saint Agnes's Eve, she performed the old ritual in hopes of seeing her future husband in a dream.
-
Young women would stay awake on Saint Agnes's Eve believing their dreams would reveal their true love.
-
The poem describes the magical traditions associated with Saint Agnes's Eve.
Surface Forms
Morphology
A learner who knows 'saint' (a holy person), 'Agnes's' (the possessive of the proper name Agnes) and 'eve' (the night before an event) can readily infer that this refers to the evening before Saint Agnes's feast day. However, the culturally specific tradition—that it is a time when young women perform rites to dream of future husbands—is encyclopedic/cultural information not predictable from the constituents, so the full conventional meaning is not fully derivable.
Etymology
Saint Agnes's Eve comes from an old custom about the night before Saint Agnes's day, when people thought the night had special power. One popular story says young women would do simple rituals and stay awake or sleep that night hoping to 'dream of their future husband', so the night became linked with love and seeing the future.
