Birthday

How to spell birthday

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce birthday

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does birthday mean?

1. nounThe annual anniversary of the day a person was born.

Birthday in a sentence

• She booked a restaurant table to celebrate her birthday.

• The office collected money for a card on his fortieth birthday.

Where does birthday come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent native English compound, formed straightforwardly from 'birth' and 'day', both of which descend from Old English. 'Birth' actually arrived a little later through Old Norse 'byrth', closely related to the Old English 'gebyrd' and the verb 'beran' meaning 'to bear' or 'to carry', the same root that gives us 'bear' a child. 'Day' comes from Old English 'daeg', a word for the period of daylight or a full reckoning of time that has cousins across the Germanic languages. The combined form 'birthday' is recorded from around the late fourteenth century, originally often referring to the day of a notable person's birth or to Christ's nativity. Because both halves are common everyday words and the spelling simply joins them with no silent letters or doubling, it gives writers very little trouble.

How the word is built

• birth (the event of being born)
• day (a 24-hour period)