# Passover

Pronunciation: US say "PAS-oh-ver" /ˈpæsˌoʊvɚ/; UK say "PAHS-oh-vuh" /ˈpɑːsˌəʊvə/

## Proper noun

1. A Jewish festival lasting seven days in Reform Judaism or eight in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, also called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, commemorating the Exodus from Egypt.
   - Simple: A Jewish holiday lasting about a week that remembers how the Israelites escaped slavery in Egypt.
   - _The synagogue hosts a communal seder on the first night of Passover each year._
   - _Passover begins at sundown and is marked by retelling the story of the Exodus._
2. The one-day Biblical feast beginning at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month, when the firstborn sons of the Israelites were spared while those of the Egyptians were killed.
   - Simple: A one-day feast in the Bible, held when God spared the Israelites' oldest sons but not those of the Egyptians.
   - _According to the account in Exodus, the firstborn of Egypt died on the night of the first Passover._
   - _Passover itself lasted one day, and the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread followed right after._

## Origin

Formed from the verb phrase 'pass over,' this word was coined by William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536), the first translator of the Bible into modern English, as a calque of the Hebrew פֶּסַח (pésakh).

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/passover (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).