saint's day

English

Noun

saint's day (plural saints' days)

1. A day in a liturgical calendar that is observed in honour of a saint; not necessarily a holiday.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter III, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”  He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.

   • 1920, [Elizabeth von Arnim], In the Mountains, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, page 43:

     To-day is a saint's day. This is a Catholic part of Switzerland, and they have a great many holidays because they have a great many saints. There is hardly a week without some saint in it who has to be commemorated, and often there are two in the same week, and sometimes three.

Hypernyms

• feast day, holy day

Hyponyms

• name day, patronal feast, slava (among South Slavs)

Related terms

• kirmess / kermesse

Translations

saint's day

• German: Heiligenfest n
• Ukrainian: празник (uk) m (praznyk), свято n (svjato), храм (uk) m (xram), день ангела f (denʹ anhela)

Further reading

• calendar of saints on Wikipedia.Wikipedia