- resurrection (n.)
- c.1300, originally the name of a Church festival commemorating Christ's rising from death, from Anglo-French resurrectiun, Old French resurrection "the Resurrection of Christ" (12c.) and directly from Church Latin resurrectionem (nominative resurrectio) "a rising again from the dead," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin resurgere "rise again, appear again" (see resurgent). Replaced Old English æriste.
Generalized sense of "revival" is from 1640s. Also used in Middle English of the rising again of the dead on the Last Day (c.1300). Resurrectionist, euphemism for "grave-robber" is attested from 1776. Resurrection pie was mid-19c. English schoolboy slang for a pie made from leftovers of previous meals; first attested 1831 as a Sheffield dialect term.
There was a dreadful pie for dinner every Monday; a meat-pie with a stony crust that did not break; but split into scaly layers, with horrible lumps of gristle inside, and such strings of sinew (alternated by lumps of flabby fat) as a ghoule might use as a rosary. We called it kitten pie--resurrection pie--rag pie--dead man's pie. We cursed it by night we cursed it by day; we wouldn't stand it, we said; we would write to our friends; we would go to sea. ["How I Went to Sea," "Harper's Magazine," December 1852]