Rite of passage is a celebration of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In
cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of
rite de passage, a French term innovated by the
ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in his work
Les rites de passage, "Rites of Passage." The term is now fully adopted into anthropology as well as into the literature and popular cultures of many modern languages.