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.

Yeah I also moved to the Midlands from elsewhere and have noticed every school holiday is called a half term here. I'd always called the main ones Christmas, Easter and Summer and the week long ones in the middle half terms. The (massive) pedant in me finds it slightly annoying but it's really not that important so I'm (kind of) over it 😂

They are regionally challenged 😂

Where I am now (Yorkshire) it’s ‘half term’ for all of them except the summer when it’s called ‘the 6 week ‘oliday’ but where I grew up in the South East it was half term when it was midway through and then the summer/Easter/Christmas holiday. I’m a real pedant but for some reason I don’t find this one jarring. I just vaguely register it when people say half term at the ‘wrong’ time. (Unlike dinner/tea instead of lunch/dinner…I still wince at that over 20 years in! Alongside adults saying they ‘break up on Friday’ when they’re going on annual leave)

I’m Scottish and we never call it half term here. It’s the summer/ Easter /Christmas and Tattie holidays here. The April, October and two weeks in July are also called the fast.

im from the midlands and I don’t do this. Half term is for the actual half terms although I would understand whitsun week (being the week we have off when it is whitsun 🤣🤣) so Birmingham isn’t included in this 🤣

Ah so you're lunch and dinner rather than dinner and tea?
My southern friends "lovingly" laugh when I say tea and I mean the evening meal.

I wonder if they say lunch lady in schools down south rather than dinner lady.

Nope. Half terms come in October, February and May, and are called as such.
After the end of the autumn term comes the Christmas holidays. After the spring term is the Easter holidays, and after the summer term is the summer holidays.
What logical reason is there for saying "half term" when the term has finished??

Really? Who cares!!!

Same here in Wales. Always Christmas, Easter and Summer for the longer holidays and half term for the short holidays interspersed between the longer ones.
Why call would you call a holiday half term unless it actually comes halfway through a term?!

Midland also, its half term for us unless it’s summer or Christmas break.

I absolutely don’t but people round here (North East) do, and it confuses me! So it’s basically just Easter..

Please feel free to provide me with a list of acceptable thread topics then, if this one falls short of your threshold.

But it’s not half term now, it’s the end of the Spring term - the Summer term will start when the schools go back after Easter. Summer half term is at the end of May (Whitsun week).
I’m from the West Country originally but have spent the last 15 years in the Midlands. Haven’t noticed anyone I know here calling the Easter holidays ‘half term’.

OP - I am honestly sorry if I have offended you. If it's something that's bothering you, you have every right to post.

It isn't bothering me, I just think some things are enjoyable to discuss. One of those being variances in language.

I'm.a teacher in.the Midlands. I always say the correct name . If someone says half term.i.correct them. I'm.currently on holiday up north and heard someone refer to Easter as half term. Didn't correct them as they were a stranger 😁

In the SW, originally from West Yorks, the only anomaly I’ve noticed is that I’m the only person who calls May HT ‘Spring Bank’.
Anything aside from Easter, Christmas and Summer I call half term.

I don’t see why anyone would want to use a phrase that a) refers to the halfway point in a term and b) denotes a one-week holiday to describe the longer holidays between academic terms and, in the summer, academic years.

As someone who teaches at a university without a reading week, the experience of the half-term holidays is also completely different for our family. My kids always have to go to holiday clubs while we work. In the other holidays we are off with them and often go away. So for us it is useful to distinguish ‘school holidays’ from ‘half-term holidays’.

Years ago, people also used the phrase ‘half holiday’ for a school day (usually a Wednesday) where you had the afternoon off.

I day school holidays now but tbh I am sucking the ‚half term‘ thing. I grew up in Plymouth with both parents teaching and we had Christmas, Easter and Summer holidays, with half terms being half way between terms in between the longer holidays.

I have a 6yo now (home Ed) and everyone from school Ed and home Ed to actual zoos or holiday clubs days half term for every holiday.And it’s not because I live in Bristol now

We had lunch breaks with dinner ladies at school in Plymouth (80s/90s)

Half term because it’s a break “halfway through” the term. These breaks are a week long, as opposed to the longer, end of term breaks.

I have heard others call the longer holidays half term though and I don’t correct them but do flag it to myself.
”err negative.”

When I was at primary school, in Yorkshire, we had 2 weeks off in May for Whitsun.

No. This is the Easter holidays. 2 weeks. 1/2 term is only a week, 1/2 way through the Term.

It's not just a 'variance of language' like a dialect or accent. It's factually incorrect!

Whooooooo caaaaaaaaaares