Weekends

How to spell weekends

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce weekends

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does weekends mean?

1. nounThe periods at the end of each week, typically Saturday and Sunday, when most people are not working.

Weekends in a sentence

• Most of her weekends are spent catching up on housework and laundry.

• The gym is far busier on weekends than on weekday mornings.

Where does weekends come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a straightforward native English compound, joining 'week' and 'end', both of which descend from Old English. 'Week' comes from the Old English 'wicu' or 'wucu', meaning the cycle of seven days, while 'end' comes from the Old English 'ende', meaning the boundary or finishing point of something. The compound 'weekend' itself is surprisingly modern, appearing only in the late nineteenth century in Britain to describe the Saturday-to-Monday break taken away from work, and the plural form simply adds the regular '-s'. Because both halves are plain everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the only mild trap is remembering that 'week' keeps its double 'e' and the two parts are written as one solid word rather than 'week ends'. The idea spread quickly alongside the factory and office working week, and by the early twentieth century the term was fully established across the English-speaking world.

How the word is built

• week (the seven-day period)
• end (the close or final part)
• -s (plural)