“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”

Luke 2:20, (King James Version)

Luke’s is the only gospel that mentions the Annunciation to the Shepherds, by an unnamed angel bringing news of the birth of Jesus. But the shepherds, and their animals, are now indispensable figures in Christmas nativity scenes; and of course “second sheep” is notoriously a role for the duffers in primary-school Christmas nativity plays.

I’m particularly fond of Berchem’s interpretation of the scene, above. The action pose of the angel, the gobsmacked dog, the cherubic Busby Berkeley routine taking place in the background … what’s not to like?

The King James Version of this famous passage has served to anchor an otherwise disused word in modern English—there aren’t many uses of tidings beyond the phrases “good tidings” and “glad tidings”.

The word first appeared in English around the end of the 11th century, and looks as if it might have something to do with Old English tídan, “to happen” (of which more later). But the Oxford English Dictionary makes a good case for it coming from Old Norse tíðendi, “events” or “news of events”. (Both words having a common Germanic origin, relating to time, which they share with German Zeit, “time”.)

So good tidings means “good news”, and the phrase is so rendered in many modern Bible translations, including the Good News Translation of 1976. And although a single piece of news was once a singular tiding, in the last few centuries tidings has become a plurale tantum, like scissors and trousers—it’s a noun that only ever appears in the plural.

The phrase “I bring you good tidings” was a single word in the original Greek: euangelizomai, deriving from euangelion, “good news”. The eu- bit is the “good” prefix, familiar in English from words like euphoria, “good feeling”; eulogy, “good speaking”; and eugenic, “good birth”. (This last being a demonstration that not all “good” words are good things.) The angelion bit derives from angelos, “messenger”. Which is where our word angel comes from—as Luke’s story demonstrates, an angel’s job frequently involved delivering messages. Another Biblical word in English derives from euangelion, and becomes more obvious when we see the intermediate Latin word formed from the Greek: evangelium. Someone who brings good news is an evangelist. And Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, credited with authorship of the four accounts of Jesus’ life at the start of the New Testament, are often called the Four Evangelists. More generally, evangelists are Christians who put major emphasis on disseminating Jesus’ teachings through preaching, a practice (and movement) called evangelism.

A few other angelion-derived words are recorded in English, though they seem to be nonce-words, coined for a particular occasion but not part of the general lexicon. An autangelist is someone who delivers their own message, like the neighbour who turns up on your doorstep with a Christmas card. A more useful word is cacangelist, a deliverer of bad news; and even more useful nowadays is pseudangelist, one who delivers fake news.

But let’s go back to evangelium, before I finish drawing Biblical connections. As well as borrowing the Greek word for good news, the Romans also translated the concept into Latin: bonum nuntium. And when that phrase was in turn translated into Old English it became gód spel, the origin of our word gospel. Which is why we say that four Gospels were written by four Evangelists—it’s all about those good tidings. Old English spel, “speech, narrative”, is the origin of our word spell, for a magical incantation—and the title of the 1971 musical, Godspell, was a punning return to the Old English roots of the word gospel. “Good news” neatly mutated into “God magic”.

For other “tide” words in English, we can go back to Old English tídan, “to happen”, as promised, as well as its associated noun, tíd, “time”.

Tídan gave us an old verb, tide, meaning “to happen”, which was still in use when Shakespeare was writing. When he had Flute (playing the part of Thisbe in the “play within the play”, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1) say:

Tide life, tide death, I come without delay.

the character was saying that nothing in life or death could prevent her making the proposed assignation.

We’ve almost entirely lost that verb in modern English. The last remnant is the verb betide, “to happen to [someone or something]”, usually combined with the word woe: “Woe betide you if you break my new vase.”*

Tíd gave us the noun tide, originally meaning “a period of time”. Nowadays it’s familiar, if at all, from the poetry of the nineteenth century. It can be tacked on to entire seasons: wintertide, summertide; and on to months, as in Clinton Scollard’s poem Be Ye In Love With April-Tide?

Be ye in love with April-tide?
I’ faith, in love am I!

(I’ faith, me too.)

It was also often associated with days, particularly feast days and holidays: Allhallowtide was the period around All Hallows Day, November 1; Shrovetide designated the three days before the start of Lent, in the Easter calendar, sometimes known as Shrove Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. (Maybe next year I’ll finally get around to writing about the mathematical and etymological complexities of Easter. Watch this space.) Saint Andrew’s tide was the day dedicated to St Andrew, November 30. And so on … pretty much any Christian festival or day of observance could have the suffix -tide attached to it.

And it could be linked to parts of the day: eventide for evening; noontide for the time around midday—and, perhaps less familiar, morrowtide for morning.

Those usages are no longer current. But the last vestige of tide, used to mean “time” or “event”, is with us still, designating the regular ebb and flow of the oceans, twice a day, in response to the Moon’s gravity. And that noun has been verbed in the phrase tide over: “If we’re eating that late, I’m going to need a sandwich to tide me over.” The metaphor seems to be the idea of a rising tide lifting and propelling one towards some goal. And it’s somehow pleasing that this usage has still managed to stay linked to the original idea of passing time.

And that concludes my tidings for this Christmas. If you’re disposed to celebrate, have a good Yuletide, and I wish you a happy New Year’s tide, when it comes.

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* Some modern versions of the play add an apostrophe to tide, as if it were a shortened form of betide. But the First Folio has no apostrophe.