Meaning of half-holiday | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Half of a working or school day set aside for recreation on a special occasion.
2. A religious festival lasting for half a day.
   historical

Equivalents

Examples

“1784, obituary of Daniel Wray in The Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume 54, Part 1, p. 72, His memory is still reflected on with a degree of pleasure by some […] who can revive the long-buried ideas of what passed at that school about the year 1716 or 17; when Sir Daniel was always ready, if any body was wanted, to beg⟳ a half-holiday on Tuesday afternoons.”

“Mr. Pecksniff and Mr. Jinkins came home to dinner, arm-in-arm; for the latter gentleman had made half-holiday, on purpose; thus gaining an immense advantage over the youngest gentleman and the rest⟳, whose time, as it perversely chanced, was all bespoke, until the evening.”

“Bradly was late getting into town—he had forgotten that Saturday was a half-holiday. But he was in time to lay⟳ in stores at Cooley’s, and call⟳ at the butcher’s and greengrocer’s while the parcels were being made up.”

“A rumor would start⟳ that an extra half-holiday was going to be given (which happened fairly frequently during the war, whenever an old boy had been decorated with a D.S.O. or an M.C. A V.C. ranked as a whole holiday, but this only happened twice).”

“For they had […] some appointed times, appropriated to the worship⟳ of their severall gods, as before was shewed: their holydayes, & half-holydayes, according to that estimation which their gods had gotten in the World.”

“But this [Carmentalia] was an half holiday, (intercisus); for after mid day it was dies profestus, a common work⟳ day.”

CEFR level