half-holiday
English
editNoun
edithalf-holiday (plural half-holidays)
- Half of a working or school day set aside for recreation on a special occasion.
- 1784, obituary of Daniel Wray in The Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume 54, Part 1, p. 72,[1]
- 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.
- 1844, Charles Dickens, chapter 11, in Martin Chuzzlewit[2], London: Chapman & Hall, page 142:
- 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.
- 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 98:
- 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.
- 1971, Graham Greene, chapter 2, in A Sort of Life[3], New York: Simon and Schuster, page 71:
- 1784, obituary of Daniel Wray in The Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume 54, Part 1, p. 72,[1]
- (historical) A religious festival lasting for half a day.
- 1636, Peter Heylyn, The History of the Sabbath[4], London: Henry Seile, Book 1, Chapter 4, p. 83:
- 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.
- 1792, Alexander Adam, Roman Antiquities[5], Edinburgh: W. Creech, pages 333–334:
- But this [Carmentalia] was an half holiday, (intercisus); for after mid day it was dies profestus, a common work day.