field day

English edit

Etymology edit

Some postulate the idiomatic usage is derived from the "parade day" military use. A parade is much easier than the soldiers’ usual drilling and intense exercise.

Pronunciation edit

Audio (AU) (file)

Noun edit

field day (plural field days)

(military) A day for manoeuvres and tactical exercises in "the field".
- 1937, Siegfried Sassoon, Sherston's Progress, London: Faber, page 621 (in The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston ):
  This morning I got up, with great difficulty, at 6.30, and at 7.45 we started out for a Brigade Field Day. Did an attack from 10.30 to 2.30, but it wasn't a strenuous one for me as I was told to "become a casualty" soon after the 3000 yard assault began ….
A school day for athletic events; a sports day.
A day of class taken away from school for a field trip.
(idiomatic) A great time or a great deal to do; a period of bustling activity.
They went to the park and had a field day playing on the swings.
- 2014, Vance Munraff, Sounds Like Paradise: a Fugitive's Tale, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 62:
  A family of frisky squirrels was having a field day amongst the towering obstacle course of foliage.
(idiomatic) A great time or a great deal to do, at somebody else's expense.
The reporters will have a field day with a comment like that.

The scandal was a field day for the press.
- 1966 December, Stephen Stills, “For What It's Worth”‎^[1]performed by Buffalo Springfield:
  What a field day for the heat (Ooo-ooo-ooo) / A thousand people in the street (Ooo-ooo-ooo) / Singing songs and a-carryin' signs (Ooo-ooo-ooo) / Mostly say "Hooray for our side" (Ooo-ooo-ooo)
- 2009, Julie Jurgens-Shimek, Autism Is a Four Letter Word: Love, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 32:
  It had become a legal nightmare. All parties had retained attorneys; the community and press were having a field day.
- 2012, Claudia Parker, Becoming a Mother, While Losing My Own, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 158:
  I thought I'd been so thorough, so efficient, and so cost conscious, but look where I was now. The devil was having a field day with my head.
- 2012, Gary Rosen, Unfair to Genius: The Strange and Litigious Career of Ira B. Arnstein, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 140:
  The reporters were having a field day with our saga and the courtroom filled with spectators.
- 2022 November 15, Patrick Wintour, “Sergei Lavrov, a fixture of Russian diplomacy facing his toughest test in Ukraine”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:
  The Russian foreign ministry had a field day denouncing what it called western propaganda as a high-level lie.
(US military, specifically US Navy, US Coast Guard and US Marine Corps) A day on which there is top-to-bottom all-hands cleaning.

Translations edit

school day for athletic events — see also field trip

Hungarian: sportnap (hu)
Swedish: friluftsdag (sv) c

Anagrams edit

ladyfied