NATIVITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Nativity

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/nətˈɪvəti/ Listen

noun

Nativity n. (pl. nativies)

The coming into life or into the world; birth; also, the circumstances attending birth, as time, place, manner, etc. "I have served him from the hour of my nativity." "Thou hast left... the land of thy nativity." "These in their dark nativity the deep Shall yield us, pregnant with infernal flame."

(Fine Arts) (capitalized) A picture representing or symbolizing the early infancy of Christ. The simplest form is the babe in a rude cradle, and the heads of an ox and an ass to express the stable in which he was born.

(Astrol.) A representation of the positions of the heavenly bodies as the moment of one's birth, supposed to indicate one's future destinies; a horoscope.

The Nativity, the birth or birthday of Christ; Christmas day.

To cast one's nativity or To calculate one's nativity (Astrol.), to find out and represent the position of the heavenly bodies at the time of one's birth.

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Etymology of 'Nativity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Nativity" Quotes from Famous Books

... men march joyously to battle and death to drum and fife squeaking and rattling The Girl I Left Behind Me. It may be a long way to Tipperary, but it is longer to the end of the tether that binds the heart of man to the cradle songs of his nativity. With the cradle songs of America the name of Stephen Collins Foster "is immortal bound," and I would no more dishonor his memory than that of Robert Burns or the author ...

— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... as to make it permanent, but in this he failed. His works were distinguished for extreme minuteness of detail. "In the church of the Annunziata in Florence, he executed an historical piece in fresco, but finished 'a secco', wherein he represented the Nativity of Christ, painted with such minuteness of care, that each separate straw in the roof of a cabin, figured therein, may be counted, and every knot in these straws distinguished."—Vasari. His remaining works are much injured by scaling or the abrasion ...

— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... authorities of Lincoln's Inn had already bestirred themselves to reduce the extravagances of dress and toilet which marked their younger and more frivolous fellow-members. "And for decency in Apparel," writes Dugdale, concerning Lincoln's Inn, "at a council held on the day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 23 Hen. VIII. it was ordered that for a continual rule, to be thenceforth kept in this house, no gentleman, being a fellow of this house, should wear any cut or pansid hose, ...

— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... sale, but eight others afterwards joined them, making in all thirty-five. The schoolmaster who was on his return to Woradoo, the place of his nativity, took with him eight of his scholars. Altogether, the come numbered ...

— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... me, all that them hast done to thy mother-in-law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou ...

— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

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