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Honeymoon From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A honeymoon is the …

Comment posted Guess the Word VII (7) by billchair.

Honeymoon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A honeymoon is the traditional holiday taken by newlyweds (or between two people in an early harmonious period in a relationship) to celebrate their marriage in intimacy and seclusion. Today, honeymoons by Westerners are sometimes celebrated somewhere exotic or otherwise considered special and romantic.
History
Possibly the earliest reference to a honeymoon is in Deuteronomy 24:5. “When a man is newly wed, he need not go out on a military expedition, nor shall any public duty be imposed on him. He shall be exempt for one year for the sake of his family, to bring joy to the wife he has married.”
In Western culture, the custom of a newlywed couple going on a holiday together originated in early 19th century Great Britain. Upper-class couples would take a “bridal tour”, sometimes accompanied by friends or family, to visit relatives that had not been able to attend the wedding. The practice soon spread to the European continent and was known as voyage à la façon anglaise (English-style voyage) in France from the 1820s on.
Honeymoons in the modern sense (i.e. a pure holiday voyage undertaken by the married couple) became widespread during the Belle Époque, as one of the first instances of modern mass tourism. This came about in spite of initial disapproval by contemporary medical opinion (which worried about women’s frail health) and by savoir vivre guidebooks (which deplored the public attention drawn to what was assumed to be the wife’s sexual initiation). The most popular honeymoon destinations at the time were the French Riviera and Italy, particularly its seaside resorts and romantic cities such as Rome, Verona or Venice. Typically honeymoons would start on the night they were married.
The term honeymoon originates from the tradition that the in-laws of the couple were required to supply a month’s worth of mead, or honey wine.
A honeymoon can also be the first moments a newly-wed couple spend together, or the first holiday they spend together to celebrate their marriage.
“ The first month after marriage, when there is nothing but tenderness and pleasure” (Samuel Johnson); originally having no reference to the period of a month, but comparing the mutual affection of newly-married persons to the changing moon which is no sooner full than it begins to wane; now, usually, the holiday spent together by a newly-married couple, before settling down at home. ”

One of the more recent citations in the Oxford English Dictionary indicates that, while today honeymoon has a positive meaning, the word was originally a reference to the inevitable waning of love like a phase of the moon. This, the first known literary reference to the honeymoon, was penned in 1552, in Richard Huloet’s Abecedarium Anglico Latinum. Huloet writes:
“ Hony mone, a term proverbially applied to such as be newly married, which will not fall out at the first, but th’one loveth the other at the beginning exceedingly, the likelihood of their exceadinge love appearing to aswage, ye which time the vulgar people call the hony mone.”

Phew, what a good post, if I do say so!