Holiday

How to spell holiday

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce holiday

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does holiday mean?

1. nounA day of celebration or recreation when normal work is suspended, especially an official public day off.
2. nounAn extended period of leisure or travel away from home and work.

Holiday in a sentence

• The bank holiday falls on the last Monday of August.

• They booked a two-week holiday on the Spanish coast.

• Most offices close for the public holiday at the end of the year.

• She spent her summer holiday hiking in the Lake District.

Where does holiday come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from the Old English haligdaeg, a compound of halig meaning 'holy' and daeg meaning 'day'. It originally referred to a consecrated day, a religious festival on which ordinary labour was set aside for worship. Over the centuries the religious sense broadened, so that by the late medieval period any day free from work, whether sacred or simply festive, could be called a holiday. The spelling has drifted away from its parent word: the 'holy' inside it lost its second 'l' and its long vowel, which is exactly why writers can forget that the first part was once 'holy'. In British and Canadian usage the word also came to mean an extended break or trip away from home, the equivalent of the American 'vacation', a sense that grew in the nineteenth century as paid leave and seaside travel became common.

How the word is built

• holi- (from Old English halig: holy)
• day