Around Easter time, you’ve probably heard people talk a whole lot about the “Passion of Christ”. Obviously they’re talking about His torture, crucifixion, and death.
But, why do we call it His “passion”?
Well, our earliest records show that the word “passion” entered the English language around the year 1200. During this time, the only meaning of the word had to do with Jesus’ crucifixion.
It comes from the Latin word passio, which itself is another form of the Latin verb pati, meaning “to suffer” or “to endure”. So, the passion of Christ is literally “the suffering of Christ”.
That Latin word, pati, is also where we get the word “patience”. If you are being patient, then you are literally “suffering” or “enduring through” something. You can also think of patients in a doctor’s office. A patient is someone who is suffering from some sort of illness or injury.
The confusion for modern English speakers comes from the fact that the word passion took on a new meaning around the year 1400. At that time, it started to more commonly mean “an intense emotion”. Think of how you might describe someone as “passionate”. This is from a connection to the Greek word pathos, which also meant “suffering”, but took on a second meaning of “emotion”.
And since the French language comes mostly from Latin, it gives us many of our words which come from Latin. So, before William the Conqueror of France invaded England in 1066, “English” was still mainly a Germanic language. Because of this, Old English had a similar word to “passion” back before William the Conqueror’s invasion: þolian.
That Old English word gives us the rarely used modern English word “Thole”.
Thole means the same thing as passion: suffering.
So, the next time you hear about “the passion of Christ”, you can know that it really just means “the suffering of Christ”. Or, if you want to use a very rare word, you can start talking about “the thole of Christ”.