c.1300, originally the name of a Church festival commemorating Christ's rising from death, from Anglo-French resurrectiun, Old French resurrection "the Resurrection of Christ" (12c.) and directly from Church Latin resurrectionem (nominative resurrectio) "a rising again from the dead," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin resurgere "rise again, appear again" (see resurgent). Replaced Old English æriste.
Generalized sense of "revival" is from 1640s. Also used in Middle English of the rising again of the dead on the Last Day (c.1300). Resurrectionist, euphemism for "grave-robber" is attested from 1776. Resurrection pie was mid-19c. English schoolboy slang for a pie made from leftovers of previous meals; first attested 1831 as a Sheffield dialect term.
There was a dreadful pie for dinner every Monday; a meat-pie with a stony crust that did not break; but split into scaly layers, with horrible lumps of gristle inside, and such strings of sinew (alternated by lumps of flabby fat) as a ghoule might use as a rosary. We called it kitten pie--resurrection pie--rag pie--dead man's pie. We cursed it by night we cursed it by day; we wouldn't stand it, we said; we would write to our friends; we would go to sea. ["How I Went to Sea," "Harper's Magazine," December 1852]
The rising of Jesus from the tomb after his death; a central and distinctive belief of the Christian faith. The Gospels state that after Jesus was crucified and lay in a tomb between Friday evening and Sunday morning, he rose, in body as well as in spirit, and appeared alive to his followers. His resurrection is the basis for the Christian belief that not only Jesus but all Christians will triumph over death. Christians celebrate the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
the rising from the dead of a divine or human being who still retains his own personhood, or individuality, though the body may or may not be changed. The belief in the resurrection of the body is usually associated with Christianity, because of the doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ, but it also is associated with later Judaism, which provided basic ideas that were expanded in Christianity and Islam.