overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

yahrzeit.

The anniversary of a person's death, usually a parent's, often marked by the lighting of a memorial candle and other rituals.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈjɑːtsaɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈjɑɹtsaɪt/General-American
  1. The anniversary of a person's death, usually a parent's, often marked by the lighting of a memorial candle and other rituals.

    Judaism
Where this word comes from

PIE word *yóh₁r̥ Borrowed from Yiddish יאָרצײַט (yortsayt), from Middle High German jārzīt (“anniversary; Christian commemoration of a person’s death”); from Middle High German jār (“year”) (from Old High German jār (“year”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *yéh₁-r/n- (“year”)) + Middle High German zīt (“time”) (from Old High German zīt (“time”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dh₂ítis (“part; time”), from the root *deh₂-, *deh₂-y- (“to chop up, divide; to distribute (pieces)”), whence also time and, via Ancient Greek, daemon). The Yiddish word is cognate with German Jahreszeit (“season”), which heavily influenced the spelling and pronunciation once the word was borrowed into English. Piecewise doublet of yeartide.

FROM WORD TO NAME

Try it on your idea.

yahrzeit has 8 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

yahrzeit studioyahrzeit workshello, yahrzeit

These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.

Explore the name generator

A word with a source.

Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.