Other forms: holidays
A holiday is time away from school or work, often spent travelling. Go on holiday, the summer holidays, a bank holiday.
British and American usage differ sharply. In Britain a holiday is both a trip and a public day off, and you go on holiday. In America a holiday is only the public day — Thanksgiving, Independence Day — and a trip is a vacation, and you go on vacation. That difference causes real confusion. Note the British school holidays, which are the terms' gaps, and bank holiday, which is the standard British term for a public holiday.
1nounholidayA period of time away from work or school.
“They go on holiday the same fortnight every year.”
2noundayA day on which most people do not work.
“Monday is a bank holiday.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
holiday is a period of time off.
Also accepted in games: vacation
Old English haligdaeg meant holy day — a religious festival on which nobody worked. The holiness has gone and the not working has stayed, which is one of the more cheerful pieces of semantic drift in English.
Middle English
halyday
English, today
holiday
From Middle English halyday. From Middle English halyday, holyday, halidei, haliȝdei, from Old English hāliġdæġ (“holy day, Sabbath”), equivalent to holy + day. Compare West Frisian hjeldei (“holiday”), Danish helligdag (“holiday”), Norwegian helligdag (“holiday”), Swedish helgdag (“holiday, feast”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA