Library / English Dictionary

HOLIDAY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure

Example:

we took a short holiday in Puerto Rico

Synonyms:

holiday; vacation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Hypernyms ("holiday" is a kind of...):

leisure; leisure time (time available for ease and relaxation)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "holiday"):

half-term (a short vacation about halfway through a school term)

vac; vacay (informal term for vacation)

field day; outing; picnic (a day devoted to an outdoor social gathering)

honeymoon (a holiday taken by a newly married couple)

paid vacation (a vacation from work by an employee with pay granted)

Derivation:

holiday (spend or take a vacation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A day on which work is suspended by law or custom

Example:

it's a good thing that New Year's was a holiday because everyone had a hangover

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Hypernyms ("holiday" is a kind of...):

day (a day assigned to a particular purpose or observance)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "holiday"):

half-holiday (a day on which half is free from work or duty)

feast day; fete day (a day designated for feasting)

holy day; religious holiday (a day specified for religious observance)

Christmas Eve; Dec 24 (the day before Christmas)

legal holiday; national holiday; public holiday (authorized by law and limiting work or official business)

Poppy Day; Remembrance Day; Remembrance Sunday (the Sunday nearest to November 11 when those who died in World War I and World War II are commemorated)

Ramanavami (Hindu lunar holiday (on the 9th day of Caitra) to celebrate the birth of Rama)

Mesasamkranti (Hindu solar holiday at the beginning of the new astrological year when the sun enters the constellation Aries)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Spend or take a vacation

Synonyms:

holiday; vacation

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Hypernyms (to "holiday" is one way to...):

pass; spend (use up a period of time in a specific way)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "holiday"):

honeymoon (spend a holiday after one's marriage)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Derivation:

holiday (leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure)

Credits

 Context examples: 

She soon resolved, equally as a duty and a pleasure, to employ half an hour of this holiday of spirits in calling on Miss Fairfax.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The holidays, however, are over at last: I believe no children ever had such long ones.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

With all my heart, said Partlet, let us go and make a holiday of it together.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

She treated her therefore, with all the indulgent fondness of a parent towards a favourite child on the last day of its holidays.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

It was not Holmes’s nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They were taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, when the mission team was out for the Thanksgiving holiday.

(Curiosity Mars Rover Snaps Its Highest-Resolution Panorama Yet, NASA)

Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ) Remembering appointments, family occasions, holidays, medications.

(FAQ - Remember, NCI Thesaurus)

Peter was a hard, wiry, brown faced, country-bred lad who looked on the coming war as the schoolboy looks on his holidays.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They kept this day as a holiday, then and ever after, and spent the time in feasting and dancing.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)