O Holy Night lyrics
What does “error pining” in this carol mean? For years now, I have been looking in dictionaries, and never have found a satisfactory definition. To “pine” means to waste away. So what does error pining mean, then?
Thank you in advance to all who reply 
Er…
“Long lay the world in sin and error pining”. That is, the world lay pining in sin and error. As in, the world lay wasting away due to doing sinful stuff and doing the wrong thing and shit. I dunno, makes perfect sense to me. What’s the problem?
To “pine for” means to await with longing. The world was longing for its Saviour’s birth.
:smack: OK, now it *actually *makes perfect sense to me.
Pining doesn’t modify error. Sin = being bad. Error = making mistakes. Pining = feeling regretful (it’s an older interpretation). In this case, feeling regretful for having sinned and been in error. It’s the world that’s in sin and error and because of it, is pining.
Hang on. Perhaps it’s pining for the fjords.
Then again, never mind.
And how nice it is that God, after 4000 years, finally came up with a new method of handling sin and error. Instead of destroying everything except one family He saved everything by only destroying one person, the physical manifestation of Himself. Neato.
Different song. This is *O Holy Night, *not O Holy Grail.