We call them all "half term" here..

[Acc0untant]

And apparently I'm unreasonable. I see comment after comment about "it's not half term, that happens half way through each term" but ever since I was a child I, and everyone I know, calls each holiday a half term other than summer and Christmas. My parents and the parents of my friends (bearing in mind I'm in my 30s) have always done this.

Is it regional? I'm in the midlands. It's not just students/parents here, teachers use it this way, our school communications. Not even just my experience with one school, it was the same at my secondary school, my daughter's primary and secondary, my other child's nursery etc.

For us this is because we have a holiday after every half of a term, not that the holiday is half way within the term.

I appreciate that this wasn't the original intention of the phrase but at what point do we accept it's fine to use? Same as staycation originally meaning to do day trips from home rather than a UK holiday, it's now been used for both for so long that it's colloquially acceptable for both meanings.

Please no bun fights, I can't be bothered. I appreciate the pedantry with things such as this (and I can be that way with other stuff) but I'd really just like a nice, chilled conversation about it.

Do you say half term for almost all holidays? What region are you from? Would enjoy seeing if there's a correlation.

It’s a week nowadays but it used to be just a long weekend or even nothing at all. I mean it is only a few weeks after Xmas but so it always seems a bit of a wasted holiday . If folk don’t ski they’re often just sitting around trying to fill time at a bleak time of year here. Also dark!

It’s surely only half term if it’s a holiday that comes more or less halfway through the Christmas, Spring or Summer terms. Otherwise it’s Christmas, Easter or summer holidays.

However I know there’s a different term in parts of the north - a W-something week, to coincide with traditional local industry time off.

ON Easter Monday?

On a bank Holiday?

I don't mean to patronise, but you might want to double check that. I've never heard of any school being open on a bank holiday, ever.

Midlands here, I refer to Easter as half-term some of the time but it's really just because I am getting muddled up and can't be arsed to correct myself. When I am being correct, I say Christmas holidays, Easter holidays, Summer holidays and the rest are half-term.

Also call the late May half-term Whitsun.

Depends where you live. Where I am the Easter holidays are either side of Easter weekend (schools finished on the 11th and go back the 28th)

Whitsun fell at the end of May but was renamed the spring bank holiday in 1971. Whitsun having been a traditional religious festival. People continued to call it the "Whitsun holidays" for years afterwards. I still do! They would almost certainly have used the term Whitsun in any region of the UK (or certainly England). It was a bank holiday and people looked forward to it. They also often booked Whitsun week as holiday because the weather was/is usually quite nice. I think not having heard of it is more of an age related thing than a regional thing.

Do you say half term for almost all holidays?

No. I say half-term for a school holiday that occurs half-way through a term. School holidays at Christmas, at Easter and in the summer are the Christmas, Easter and summer holidays.

And half-term does not exist at all anywhere outside schools.

But it’s not ‘half term.’ It’s the end of the Spring Term. Half term is in February! It’s halfway through the Spring Term.

I’m also from the midlands but I call them summer holidays, oct half term, Christmas holidays feb half term, Easter holidays and whitsun

Lots of schools have 6 terms now, so in theory no half terms at all

I think this one tiny issue doesn't mean people don't care about literacy. Seems dramatic.

Do they! Six half terms surely?

Easter Monday isn’t a bank holiday in Scotland. I’m going to the dentist on Easter Monday.

I’m in the Midlands and never heard of this. Half terms are HALF WAY through the middle of each term. Then you have Christmas, Easter and Summer holidays.

Whit week(s) short for Whitsuntide, were holidays when factories/mills etc all
closed so all workers had time off. I think it might have been for maintenance and not for the workers’ welfare! The Whit school half-term holiday used to be two weeks not one.

There are three terms, each with a half term in the middle of it.

I genuinely struggle with people that get this wrong.

(inc DD, who can do fractions as she is doing A level maths :))

Nor is staycation, but they've updated the dictionary definition now. At what point does something initially incorrect become accepted usage?

I'm also from the Midlands and we didn't use it this way. We used 'Easter, Christmas, Whitsun, etc' and 'half term' for...well...halfway through the term.

Midlands. Everything is called by the calander except half term Feb and October.

I'm also in Cardiff and no it hasn't.

I'm in the East Midlands and I've never heard it.
Is it a more recent thing I wonder.
Easter holidays,half term, summer holidays,half term, Christmas holidays. I was at school in the seventies, my son in the nineties.

I grew up in the West Midlands and half term was just that - half way through the term. The longer holidays were the Christmas, Easter and summer ones. That was many, many moons ago, however!

A lot of schools have 6 terms now rather than 3.

And like I said, we often use it here as a name for a holiday that comes after each half of a term, not to signify that you're half way through a term. Certainly all those schools with 6 terms would never have a half term.

I've never heard half term being used in real life, other than in its "correct" context i.e. a week long holiday during either the autumn, spring, or summer term. The three 'big' holidays are Christmas, Easter and Summer. I was raised in the North East, and my kids have been raised in East Anglia. This is something I've only seen on MN.

However its interesting what you are saying about things changing simply because of common usage. Whilst folk like me (Gen X) will stubbornly dig their heels in about what is "correct" and what isn't, I think that things will change with the younger generations, simply because what 'should' be / what 'has been' doesn't really matter any more.

I will not use 'staycation' in its more recent form because it doesn't make sense to me - if I holiday in the UK, thats a holiday - doesn't matter if its down the road from my house or 400 miles away. But the word itself is clearly American-based so I've never used it anyway. If I want to stay at home... I simply say I'm staying at home 😂

All we've done in accepting the wrong use of a word alongside the correct use is moved from having a word that meant something specific to one where you have to ask "what do you mean by that?" I fail to see what advantage that is to anyone.