behallow

Etymology

From be- + hallow.

behallow means to make holy; consecrate; sanctify; hallow completely. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 80 out of 100.

Why “behallow” is a great word

BEHALLOW — [Verb] To make holy completely; to consecrate or sanctify in an absolute sense. From the English prefix be- (thoroughly, about) + hallow (to make holy). First attested in 1648 by the poet Robert Herrick. Unlike hallow (which generally means to make sacred) or consecrate (which implies a formal, ritual act), to behallow is to imbue with a pervasive, total sanctity. It is the centuries of whispered prayer seeping into a chapel’s stones, the worn smoothness of a step by generations of the faithful, the way afternoon light transfigures an ordinary room—a quiet insistence that holiness, once invoked, must claim everything. It is the patient alchemy of making the common world irrevocably divine.

verb

To make holy; consecrate; sanctify; hallow completely.“[...] bishops and servants of God — the "senatores natu majores," the elders and chiefs of the people — caused his eldest son, Egfurth, to be behallowed (which is the Saxon term used for the consecration of a bishop) as king of Mercia.”