December

• Decembre (obsolete)
• Dec., Dec, Dc (abbreviations)

From Middle English December, Decembre, from Old French decembre, from Latin december (“tenth month”), from Latin decem (“ten”); + Latin -ber, from -bris, an adjectival suffix; December was the tenth month in the Roman calendar.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dɪˈsɛmbə/
• (US) enPR: dĭ-sĕmʹbər, IPA^(key): /dɪˈsɛm.bɚ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛmbə(ɹ)

December (plural Decembers)

2. The twelfth and last month of the Gregorian calendar, following November and preceding the January of the following year, containing the southern solstice.

   Alternative forms: Dec, Dec., DEC, 12

   Synonym: Yulemonth (religious or archaic)

   Holonyms: calendar year; year

   Comeronyms: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November

   • a. 1633 (date written), Thomas Dekker, The Wonder of a Kingdome, London: […] Robert Raworth for Nicholas Vavasour, […], published 1636, →OCLC, Act I, signature [A3], recto:

     Old Oakes doe not eaſily fall: / Decembers cold hand combes my head and beard, / But May ſvvimmes in my blood; and he that vvalkes / VVithout his vvooden third legge, is never old.

   • 2023 June 8, Richard Collett, “He ran out of countries to visit, so he created his own”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     Wearing his best suit and sunglasses, the sultan of Slowjamastan officially declared independence from the United States of America at 12:26 p.m. on December 1, 2021 as he broadcast the secession live from his open-air government “office” in Dublândia, the capital of the Republic of Slowjamastan.

3. (rare) A female given name transferred from the month name [in turn from English].
   • 2017, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, Personal Stereo, →ISBN, page 45:

     But others were less than thrilled with this new gizmo, particularly its addictive qualities. There were reports of breakups threatened and consummated over it. “Our marriage or your Sony,” one woman told her husband, who duly sold the Walkman to a bachelor friend. A young woman named December Cole, a sales executive at a beauty magazine, recalled a trip to Atlantic City with "a basically rude" man who wouldn't stop "bopping around to his own music."

4. A surname.

• mid-December

• According to the 2010 United States Census, December is the 97210^th most common surname in the United States, belonging to 187 individuals. December is most common among White (57.22%) and Black/African American (32.09%) individuals.

• Undecimber

• Hanks, Patrick, editor (2003), “December”, in Dictionary of American Family Names, volume 1, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 422.
• Forebears

• Decembre

• december (alternative case form)
• Decembrius (Medieval Latin)

By haplology from earlier *decumo-mēmbris, analogically to septem : September, from earlier *decumo-mēnsris "of the tenth month", from the ordinal stem decem (“ten”) + *mēnsris, from mens- (“month”) + -ris. In the Roman calendar, the year began with Mārtius (“March”), and December was the tenth month of the year.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [dɛˈkɛm.bɛr]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [d̪eˈt͡ʃɛm.ber]

December (feminine Decembris, neuter Decembre); third-declension three-termination adjective

1. of December
   • 59 B.C.E. - 17 C.E. — Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, Book XXII

     postremo Decembri iam mense ad aedem Saturni Romae immolatum est.

     finally in the middle of the month of December there was a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn.

In Classical Latin, month names were regularly used as adjectives, generally modifying a case-form of mēnsis m sg (“month”) or of one of the nouns used in the Roman calendar to refer to specific days of the month from which other days were counted: Calendae f pl (“calends”), Nōnae f pl (“nones”), Īdūs f pl (“ides”). However, the masculine noun mēnsis could be omitted by ellipsis, so the masculine singular forms of month names eventually came to be used as proper nouns.^[1]

The accusative plural adjective forms Aprīlīs, Septembrīs, Octōbrīs, Novembrīs, Decembrīs^[2] are ambiguous in writing, being spelled identically to the genitive singular forms of the nouns; nevertheless, the use of ablative singular forms in -ī and comparison with the usage of other month names as adjectives supports the interpretation of -is as an accusative plural adjective ending in Classical Latin phrases such as "kalendas Septembris".^[3]

Third-declension three-termination adjective.

• In New Latin, the ablative singular can also be found as Decembre.

December m sg (genitive Decembris); third declension

1. December

   Synonym: December mensis

   • 1283 — Tomazina de Savere, published in Josip Lučić (1984) Spisi Dubrovačke Kancelarije, Knjiga II, page 310.

     Die tercio decembris — On the third day of December

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Third-declension noun (i-stem, ablative singular in -ī), singular only.

Borrowings

Unsorted borrowings

These borrowings are ultimately but perhaps not directly from Latin. They are organized into geographical and language family groups, not by etymology.

• Roman calendar on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• IPA^(key): /ˈde.kem.ber/

December m

1. December

• ǣrra ġēola

• Gregorian calendar months: mōnaþedit

  • Ianuarius
  • Februarius
  • Martius
  • Aprēlis
  • Maius
  • Iunius
  • giululing
  • Augustus, Agustus
  • September
  • October
  • November
  • December

• Joseph Bosworth, T. Northcote Toller (1898) “December”, in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

December

1. alternative form of Dezember