Sacred is the French-derived middle of the ladder holy, sacred, consecrated, and it started life as a participle. There was once an English verb sacren, "to make holy," borrowed about 1200 from Old French sacrer; sacred was its past participle. The verb died and left the participle behind as a plain adjective.
The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the participial force has disappeared entirely, and that the pronunciation shows it: we say SAY-krid, two syllables with a full second vowel, the way English treats old participles that have become adjectives — compare wicked, learned, blessed. Behind the French is Latin sacer, which meant both "sacred" and "accursed," the two faces of anything set apart from ordinary use.
sacred (adj.) late 14c., "hallowed, consecrated, or made holy by association with divinity or divine things or by religious ceremony or sanction," past-participle adjective from a now-obsolete verb sacren "to make holy" (c. 1200), from Old French sacrer "consecrate, anoint, dedicate" (12c.) or directly from Latin sacrare "to make sacred, consecrate; hold sacred; immortalize; set apart, dedicate," from sacer (genitive sacri ) "sacred, dedicated, holy, accursed." OED (1989) writes that, in sacred , "the original ppl. notion (as pronunciation indicates) disappeared from the use of the word, which is now nearly synonymous with L. sacer ." This is from Old Latin saceres , from PIE root *sak- "to sanctify." Buck groups it with Oscan sakrim , Umbrian sacra and calls it "a distinctive Italic group, without any clear outside connections." De Vaan has it from a PIE root *shnk- "to make sacred, sanctify," and finds cognates in Hittite šaklai "custom, rites," zankila "to fine, punish." Related: Sacredness . The Latin nasalized form is sancire "make sacred, confirm, ratify, ordain" (as in saint , sanction ). An Old English word for "sacred" was godcund . The meaning "of or pertaining to religion or divine things" (opposed to secular or profane ) is by c. 1600. The transferred sense of "entitled to respect or reverence" is from 1550s. Sacred cow as an object of Hindu veneration is by 1793; its figurative sense of "one who or that which must not be criticized" is in use by 1910 in U.S. journalism, reflecting Western views of Hinduism. Sacred Heart "the heart of Jesus as an object of religious veneration" is by 1823, short for Sacred Heart of Jesus or Mary . also from late 14c.
sacred came in through Norman French, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
On the register ladder
English kept all three words for this idea, one from each layer, and the rung is itself the cue: the native word is blunt and concrete, the French one polite, the Latin one formal or technical.
| Old English | French | Latin |
|---|---|---|
| holy | sacred | consecrated |
Norman French in the spelling guide · guess another word's family