miracle

Latin miraculum meant "object of wonder" in classical usage. It comes from the verb mirari, "to wonder at," from a base seen also in mirus, "wonderful, strange." In early Latin the word did not yet require a breach in nature. It named the felt shock of astonishment before it named the event that caused it.

Christian Latin sharpened the term. By late antiquity, miraculum was used for works of God that inspired wonder and testified to divine power. Augustine, writing in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, discussed such events within Christian theology. The semantic center moved from wonder itself to wondrous deed.

Old French carried the word forward as miracle, and English borrowed it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Medieval drama called biblical plays miracles, because they staged sacred wonders before a crowd. At the same time theologians and chroniclers used the word for healings, visions, and signs associated with saints. The English form changed little because the French form was already close to the later standard spelling.

Modern English preserves both the religious and the wider emotional sense. A miracle may still mean an act that exceeds ordinary natural expectation, but it may also mean any astonishingly fortunate event. The word's path is clean and memorable: from wonder, to wondrous sign, to extraordinary occurrence. What began as amazement became the name of what amazes.