Other forms: weeks
A week is seven days in a row. Next week, a week ago, twice a week.
The working week is Monday to Friday, and the weekend is Saturday and Sunday — though which day a week begins on differs by country and by calendar. In British English a week today and this time next week mean the same thing, and a fortnight means two weeks, a word American English does not use. Note weekly, weekday, midweek, and the phrase week in, week out.
1nounweekSeven days in a row.~90%
“The whole job took about three weeks longer than promised.”
2nounworkingThe working days of a week.~10%
“He works a four-day week and gets more done.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 21 sentences found in the wild and placed 21 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
week is a period of time.
Old English wice comes from a Germanic root meaning a turn or sequence, related to the word behind weak in its sense of yielding. A week is a turn of the cycle, which is why the same root gives words about change and succession.
Middle English
wyke
English, today
week
Built from
From Middle English wyke. From Middle English wyke, weke, from Old English wice, wucu (“week”), from Proto-West Germanic wikā, from Proto-Germanic wikǭ (“sequence; week”), from Proto-Indo-European weyg-, weyk- (“to bend, curve”). Related to weak and dialectal wick (“corner”); see Proto-Germanic wīkwaną (“to bend, yield, cease”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA