Jubilee

See also: jubilee and jubilée

English

Etymology

See jubilee. The proper noun sense (“London Underground line”) was named after the silver jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (born 1926) in 1977.

Proper noun

Jubilee

1. (rail transport) A London Underground line which runs between Stratford in East London and Stanmore in northwest London, via the London Docklands, South Bank, and West End.

Noun

Jubilee (plural Jubilees)

1. Alternative letter-case form of jubilee (“(Jewish history) special year of emancipation supposed to be observed every fifty years; (Roman Catholicism) special year in which plenary indulgences and remission from sin can be granted”)
   • 1642, Tho[mas] Browne, “The First Part”, in Religio Medici. […], 4th edition, London: […] E. Cotes for Andrew Crook […], published 1656, →OCLC, section 44, page 94:

     [T]hough it be in the povver of the vveakeſt arme to take avvay life, it is not in the ſtrongeſt to deprive us of death: […] the firſt day of our Jubilee is death; the Devill hath therefore failed of his deſires; vvee are happier vvith death than vve ſhould have been vvithout it: there is no miſery but in himſelfe vvhere there is no end of miſery: […]

   • 1865 (date written), [Henry Clay Work], “Marching through Georgia”, in Beadle’s Dime Song Book […], number 17, New York, N.Y.: Beadle and Company, […], published 1866, →OCLC, page 57:

     "Hurrah! hurrah! we bring the Jubilee! / Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!" / So we sung the chorus from Atlanta to the sea, / While we were marching through Georgia.

   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, “Boundaries Defined (50 CE–300)”, in Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, New York, N.Y.: Viking, published 2010, →ISBN, page 120:

     [I]n the old Israel, there had supposedly been a system of ‘Jubilee’, a year in which all land should go back to the family to which it had originally belonged and during which all slaves should be released.