Hmmm -- this wakes up my own curiosity and grammar neepery. :-) To the OED! <whips up the horses>
Look like use of the word in English started as an adjective, from the Latin anniversarius, "returning yearly" (annus + versus + arius, year + turned + adjective suffix). The primary noun definition given is "The day in any year which agrees in date with a particular day in a former year; hence, the yearly return of any remarkable date, the day on which some event of ecclesiastical, national, or personal interest, is annually celebrated."
Based on that, "anniversary" doesn't necessarily imply the first return of the date, though I will certainly allow that the more limited sense may be the way it's generally used. (The OED, after all, is not the best guide for usage, especially in the States. This is why we have style guides.) In this particular case, though -- allowing for the fact that "one-year" is an admittedly odd phrasing on my part; normally I would have said "first" -- I wanted to clarify, for anybody who wasn't aware, that this project began when DWJ passed away last March, and so I'm aiming to finish not just by the anniversary date in general, but one year after her death.
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yati
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Date: 2011-10-19 07:18 am (UTC)Look like use of the word in English started as an adjective, from the Latin anniversarius, "returning yearly" (annus + versus + arius, year + turned + adjective suffix). The primary noun definition given is "The day in any year which agrees in date with a particular day in a former year; hence, the yearly return of any remarkable date, the day on which some event of ecclesiastical, national, or personal interest, is annually celebrated."
Based on that, "anniversary" doesn't necessarily imply the first return of the date, though I will certainly allow that the more limited sense may be the way it's generally used. (The OED, after all, is not the best guide for usage, especially in the States. This is why we have style guides.) In this particular case, though -- allowing for the fact that "one-year" is an admittedly odd phrasing on my part; normally I would have said "first" -- I wanted to clarify, for anybody who wasn't aware, that this project began when DWJ passed away last March, and so I'm aiming to finish not just by the anniversary date in general, but one year after her death.