Need a little help with a word meaning

[Deadly_Nightlight]

I am reading this book where is uses the word “schriven”. I can’t find it in my dictionary. I gather it is supposed to mean atonement but I am not sure.

“when will i be schriven?” is the exact sentence in mind, the surrounding paragraph is about atonement. I just want to know if it really means atonement, that is assuming its a real word.

[Q.E.D]

The Tuesday before Lent is also known as Shrove Tuesday, a day for, instead of feasting, confessing one’s sins. Shrove is related to shrive “hear confession of, impose penance on, and absolve”. Shrove Tuesday was originally schrof Tuesday (15th century), and schrof (not to be confused with schroff; see Words to the Wise) came from the Old English form of shrive, which was scrifan “assign, decree, impose penance”. You may be surprised to learn that scrifan is the borrowed form of Latin scribere “to write” which also gave us scribble. You may be further surprised to know that it was borrowed similarly by other Germanic languages: Old Frisian skriva “to shrive, to write”, Old Saxon skriban “to write”, Middle Low German schriven, Middle Dutch scriven (modern Dutch schrijven), Old High German scriban (modern German schreiben), and Old Icelandic skrifa “to draw, paint, or write”.

From this page.

[Deadly_Nightlight]

wow that was fast, but umm what does it mean, does schriven mean penance or does it mean written?

[Pencil_Pusher]

close enough.

The word “Shriven” can be found here: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=shriven

2. To obtain absolution for (oneself) by confessing and doing penance.

if you look at the etymology section of the web page, it says

Middle English schriven, from Old English scrfan, from Latin scrbere, to write. See skrbh- in Indo-European Roots.

Which gets you your word.

[Deadly_Nightlight]

You know I went to dictionary.com, I must have been spelling it wrong, thanks