FromMiddle Frenchfestal, fromLatinfestum(“feast”).
festal (comparativemorefestal,superlativemostfestal)
- festive, relating to afestival orfeast
1905,O. Henry,Telemachus, Friend:His wife had decorated it all up with hollyhocks and poison ivy, and it looked realfestal and bowery.
1920,Edward Carpenter,Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published1921, page188:They were, at any rate in their inception, genuinely religious or genuinely social andfestal; and from either point of view they were far better than the secrecy of private indulgence which characterizes our modern world in these matters.
1952,Norman Lewis,Golden Earth:Amidst this fetor the Burmese masses live theirfestal and contemplative existences.
2010 January, David Brakke, “A New Fragment of Athanasius’s Thirty-NinthFestal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon”, inHarvard Theological Review, volume CIII, № 1, page 47:Athanasius of Alexandria’s thirty-ninthFestal Letter remains one of the most significant documents in the history of the Christian Bible. Athanasius wrote the letter, which contains the first extant list of precisely the twenty-seven books of the current New Testament canon, in 367C.E., during the final decade of his life.
