Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Formerly a common spelling of holiday: now rare, or used chiefly as two words in the literal sense of holy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A religious festival.
  • noun A secular festival; a holiday.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Obsolete form of holiday.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a day specified for religious observance

Etymologies

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Examples

  • "holyday," but many holidays, like Independence Day and Labor Day, are not holy.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 3 1984

  • For this is Nature's holyday [2] I also observed that round the whole scene were distributed a great variety of tables set with the choicest and most tempting refreshments; such they apeard to be; but whither on being touch'd as in some other enchanted woods and castles they would have vanished from before me I cannot tell as I did not put it to the trial.

    Letter 35 2009

  • Canon 1248 §1 The obligation of assisting at Mass is satisfied wherever Mass is celebrated in a catholic rite either on a holyday itself or on the evening of the previous day.

    Clarification 2009

  • Anyway its friday can't be upsetting the faithful on their holyday.

    THOSE PESKY "MILITANTS" 2009

  • Last year 24 Jewish Demacrate members of congress voted to ban Christmass from being a holyday.

    Think Progress » O’Reilly Reversal: “There Is No Attack On Easter” 2006

  • August 15 marks the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven, a holyday of obligation.

    Archive 2008-08-01 Matilda 2008

  • Geislaer — “the gates locked, and guarded by these lanzknechts, and, if we were to try to force our way, these fellows, whose everyday business is war, might make wild work of us that only fight of a holyday.”

    Quentin Durward 2008

  • August 15 marks the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven, a holyday of obligation.

    Feasting for the Assumption Jennifer Gregory Miller 2008

  • So the Fair Maid of Perth laid aside the splendid hawking glove which she was embroidering for the Lady Drummond, and putting on her holyday kirtle, prepared to attend her father to the Blackfriars monastery, which was adjacent to Couvrefew Street in which they lived.

    The Fair Maid of Perth 2008

  • The people around, and in the adjacent galleries, most of whom had the air of citizens in their holyday dresses, commented a good deal on these proceedings, and were inclined strongly to make part with the Immortals.

    Count Robert of Paris 2008

Comments

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  • if the rope slips, breaks, or is let go, or if the bowline slips, he falls overboard or breaks his neck. This, however, is a thing which never enters into a sailor's calculation. He thinks only of leaving no holydays (places not tarred,) for in case he should, he would have to go over the whole again; or of dropping no tar on the deck, for then there would be a soft word in his ear from the mate.
    Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast (1840), ch. VIII

    November 25, 2015