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Good Friday, the Friday preceding Easter, is the day on which Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ, and the occasion of Jesus' suffering and dying so that all humans, be they believers or unbelievers, could be redeemed by Christ's sacrifice. That nomenclature has prompted many a person to ponder why Christians use the adjective 'good' to describe a day on which God's only son was cruelly tortured to a slow and painful death. One of the most common explanations offered regarding the origins of the name 'Good Friday' is that 'good' derives from 'God,' and thus this holy day is actually 'God's Friday': However, as University of Minnesota linguistics professor Anatoly Liberman has written at length, no linguistic relationship exists between the words 'good' and 'God': The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that the name of Good Friday derives from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English, but in the German language Good Friday is known as Karfreitag, which means Sorrowful Friday. Another theory holds that the day marking solemn occasion of Jesus' crucifixion is termed Good Friday because, ultimately, a great deal of good came from it: This interpretation may aptly describe how many Christians regard Good Friday, but no linguistic evidence suggests that it provided the name for the day that marks Jesus' suffering and dying for all our sins. The generally accepted etymology of 'Good Friday' is that the 'good' stems from a very old use of that word, a Middle English meaning that was equivalent to holy (especially when used to designate holy days or seasons observed by the church):
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