See red letter day in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for red letter day meaning in English (4.7kB)
{
"etymology_text": "An allusion to the practice, dating to classical antiquity, of marking important days in red on calendars.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "red letter days",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"head": "red letter day"
},
"expansion": "red letter day (plural red letter days)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"_dis": "96 4",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"coordinate_terms": [
{
"_dis1": "62 38",
"word": "black letter day"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1825, Christian Gleaner and Domestic Magazine, Volume 2, page 161",
"text": "The only red-letter day occurring in July, is the twenty-fifth, called St James's Day.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1893, Thomas De Quincey, “Conversation and Coleridge”, in Alexander H. Japp, editor, The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, volume II, London: William Heinemann",
"text": "But the monsters who interrupt men in the middle of a sentence are to be found everywhere; and they are always practising. Red-letter days or black-letter days, festival or fast, makes no difference to them.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A day marked in red on calendars; a church feast day."
],
"id": "en-red_letter_day-en-noun-SKQDmT5j",
"links": [
[
"feast day",
"feast day"
]
],
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "62 38",
"word": "Scarlet Day"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"_dis1": "61 39",
"word": "day of days"
},
{
"_dis1": "61 39",
"word": "red letter date"
},
{
"_dis1": "61 39",
"word": "red-letter day"
}
]
},
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"text": "Monday was a red letter day for her. She accomplished a lot and had fun doing it.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"text": "We saw losses for days in a row, but Black Tuesday was the worst red letter day of them all.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1975, John Ankenbruck, Twentieth Century History of Fort Wayne, page 286",
"text": "\"In the meantime, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre at Chicago was a red-letter day in the gangster wars.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007, Clyde Wilton, Wilton's Wit, iUniverse, page 3",
"text": "So I assume that we all have some red letter days that are precious to our memories—maybe a first date, a wedding, a gift, a word of encouragement, a vacation, a graduation or a trip to an interesting place.\nI had one of those red letter days when I was a young boy, perhaps five or six years old.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"text": "2010, Eric Braun, Doris Day, Hachette, Revised and updated edition, unnumbered page,\nThat was, indeed, a red-letter day in my filmgoing life, and a red-letter day in my literary life was when I was asked to write a new biography of Doris Day."
}
],
"glosses": [
"A particularly significant day; a day of personal or sectarian celebration."
],
"id": "en-red_letter_day-en-noun-lcGcA4nH",
"links": [
[
"significant",
"significant"
],
[
"sectarian",
"sectarian"
],
[
"celebration",
"celebration"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A particularly significant day; a day of personal or sectarian celebration."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
],
"translations": [
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "ca",
"lang": "Catalan",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "diada"
},
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"word": "merkkipäivä"
},
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"word": "piros betűs nap"
},
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"word": "piros betűs ünnep"
},
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "merkedag"
},
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "merkedag"
},
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "pámjatnyj denʹ",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "па́мятный день"
},
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "prázdnik",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "пра́здник"
},
{
"_dis1": "39 61",
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "röd dag"
}
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-red letter day.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/aa/En-au-red_letter_day.ogg/En-au-red_letter_day.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/En-au-red_letter_day.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"red letter day"
],
"word": "red letter day"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with audio links"
],
"coordinate_terms": [
{
"word": "black letter day"
}
],
"etymology_text": "An allusion to the practice, dating to classical antiquity, of marking important days in red on calendars.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "red letter days",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"head": "red letter day"
},
"expansion": "red letter day (plural red letter days)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "Scarlet Day"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1825, Christian Gleaner and Domestic Magazine, Volume 2, page 161",
"text": "The only red-letter day occurring in July, is the twenty-fifth, called St James's Day.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1893, Thomas De Quincey, “Conversation and Coleridge”, in Alexander H. Japp, editor, The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, volume II, London: William Heinemann",
"text": "But the monsters who interrupt men in the middle of a sentence are to be found everywhere; and they are always practising. Red-letter days or black-letter days, festival or fast, makes no difference to them.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A day marked in red on calendars; a church feast day."
],
"links": [
[
"feast day",
"feast day"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English idioms",
"English terms with quotations",
"English terms with usage examples"
],
"examples": [
{
"text": "Monday was a red letter day for her. She accomplished a lot and had fun doing it.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"text": "We saw losses for days in a row, but Black Tuesday was the worst red letter day of them all.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"ref": "1975, John Ankenbruck, Twentieth Century History of Fort Wayne, page 286",
"text": "\"In the meantime, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre at Chicago was a red-letter day in the gangster wars.\"",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007, Clyde Wilton, Wilton's Wit, iUniverse, page 3",
"text": "So I assume that we all have some red letter days that are precious to our memories—maybe a first date, a wedding, a gift, a word of encouragement, a vacation, a graduation or a trip to an interesting place.\nI had one of those red letter days when I was a young boy, perhaps five or six years old.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"text": "2010, Eric Braun, Doris Day, Hachette, Revised and updated edition, unnumbered page,\nThat was, indeed, a red-letter day in my filmgoing life, and a red-letter day in my literary life was when I was asked to write a new biography of Doris Day."
}
],
"glosses": [
"A particularly significant day; a day of personal or sectarian celebration."
],
"links": [
[
"significant",
"significant"
],
[
"sectarian",
"sectarian"
],
[
"celebration",
"celebration"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A particularly significant day; a day of personal or sectarian celebration."
],
"tags": [
"idiomatic"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-red letter day.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/aa/En-au-red_letter_day.ogg/En-au-red_letter_day.ogg.mp3",
"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/En-au-red_letter_day.ogg",
"tags": [
"Australia"
],
"text": "Audio (AU)"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "day of days"
},
{
"word": "red letter date"
},
{
"word": "red-letter day"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "ca",
"lang": "Catalan",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"feminine"
],
"word": "diada"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"word": "merkkipäivä"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"word": "piros betűs nap"
},
{
"code": "hu",
"lang": "Hungarian",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"word": "piros betűs ünnep"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "merkedag"
},
{
"code": "nn",
"lang": "Norwegian Nynorsk",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "merkedag"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "pámjatnyj denʹ",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "па́мятный день"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "prázdnik",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "пра́здник"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "day of special significance",
"tags": [
"common-gender"
],
"word": "röd dag"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"red letter day"
],
"word": "red letter day"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.