With the Queen Elizabeth II's 60 years on the throne approaching, I'm seeing the word Jubilee more frequently than normal.
Is there a word to describe the people celebrating with the same root as the word Jubilee.
Everybody involved in the celebrations was (jubilee adjective).
On a similar note, what other words might fit there? What describes the feeling of general well-being, neighbourly feeling one might also experience at New Year's celebrations?
The word jubilee comes from Latin jūbilaeus and from Hebrew yōbēl which means a ram's horn which was used to proclaim the jubilee year.
The word jubilant comes from Latin jūbilāre which meant "to shout for joy."
The roots of the two words are not the same (ref: Chambers dictionary); jubilant is not an adjective for jubilee, in fact the adjective is jubilar (Free dictionary) and the rather uncommon jubilean (Ref: can find this only in OED and I see the red line in my browser even as I type this.).
But in your sentence, you need a term for happy, so it is jubilant that fits well.
Everybody involved in the celebrations was jubilant.
Jubilant fits well here, although it doesn't come from the same root apparently.
The OED defines jubilean as “Of or belonging to a jubilee.” Here are its citations:
See also the OED entry for jubilee for more details, which includes these senses:
1a. Jewish Hist. (More fully year of jubilee). A year of emancipation and restoration, which according to the institution in Lev. xxv was to be kept every fifty years, and to be proclaimed by the blast of trumpets throughout the land; during it the fields were to be left uncultivated, Hebrew slaves were to be set free, and lands and houses in the open country or unwalled towns that had been sold were to revert to their former owners or their heirs.
b. fig. or transf. A time of restitution, remission, or release.
2 R.C. Church A year instituted by Boniface VIII in 1300 as a year of remission from the penal consequences of sin, during which plenary indulgence might be obtained by a pilgrimage to Rome, the visiting of certain churches there, the giving of alms, fasting three days, and the performance of other pious works. It was at first appointed to take place every hundred years, but the period was afterwards shortened to fifty, thirty-three, and twenty-five years, and now ‘an extraordinary jubilee is granted at any time either to the whole Church or to particular countries or cities, and not necessarily or even usually for a whole year’ (Cath. Dict. 1885).
3a. The fiftieth anniversary of an event; the celebration of the completion of fifty years of reign, of activity, or continuance in any business, occupation, rank or condition. silver jubilee (after silver wedding), a name for the celebration for the twenty-fifth anniversary; so diamond jubilee, applied to the celebration of the sixtieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria.
