_Whit-sonday_ was, therefore, the day on which the Apostles were endued by God with _wisdom_ and knowledge: and my Query is, whether the root of the word may not be found in the Anglo-Saxon verb,--
_Witan_, to know, understand (whence our _wit_, in its old meaning of good sense, or cleverness and the expression "having one's _wits_ about one," &c.); or else, perhaps, from--
_Wisian_, to instruct, show, inform; (Ger. _weisen_). Not being an Anglo-Saxon scholar, I am unable of myself to trace the formation of the word _witson_ from either of these roots: and I should feel greatly obliged to any of your correspondents who might be able and willing to inform me, whether that form is deduceable from either of the above verbs; and if so, what sense it would bear in our present language. I am convinced, that _wisdom day_, or _teaching day_, would afford a very far better reason for the name now applied to Pentecost, than any of the reasons commonly given. I should observe, that I think it incorrect to say Whit-Sunday. It should be Whitsun (Witesone) Day. If it is Whit Sunday, why do we say Easter Day, and not Easter Sunday? Why do we say Whitsun-Tide? Why does our Prayer Book say Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun-week (just as before, Monday and Tuesday in Easter-week)? And why do the lower classes, whose "vulgarisms" are, in nine cases out of ten, more correct than our refinements, still talk about Whitsun Monday and Whitsun Tuesday, where the more polite say, Whit Monday and Tuesday?
Query II. As I am upon etymologies, let me ask, may not the word _Mass_, used for the Lord's Supper--which Baronius derives from the Hebrew _missach_, an oblation, and which is commonly derived from the "missa missorum"--be nothing more nor less than _mess_ (_mes_, old French), the meal, the repast, the supper? We have it still lingering in the phrase, "an officers' mess;" i.e. a meal taken in common at the same table; and so, "to mess together," "messmate," and so on. Compare the Moeso-Gothic _mats_, food: and _maz_, which Bosworth says (_A.-S. Dic._ sub voc. _Mete_) is used for bread, food, in Otfrid's poetical paraphrase of the Gospels, in Alemannic or High German, published by Graff, Konigsberg, 1831.