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.

I moved up north & it’s definitely regional because I’d not come across it before. I do find it mildly annoying. I’ve also heard whitsun week a lot, seemingly from religious schools.

Thennnnnn whyyyyyy commenttttttt

Because its been like 17 pages since I originally commented and can’t believe its still going round in circles 😆 impressed you’re still here tbh OP, with the passion you have arisen in posters over this little issue!

It's interesting that down south the evening meal is dinner but you have dinner ladies for the day time meal at school

Ricky Gervais "I don't want f'ing piano lessons!!!" springs to mind

I think it's guitar lessons but I totally agree 😂

I’m up north and half term was always half through the term- around a week in Oct, Feb and May. In recent years I’ve noticed people calling more school holidays “half term” when they’re not. I think it’s incorrect (because it is- and illogical) but doesn’t bother me as such.

I don’t think it’s linked to the dinner/lunch and tea/dinner debate as they’re very old examples of regional differences and not illogical.

Aren't lunch/dinner/tea supposedly class things?

I grew up calling them dinner and tea but now say lunch and dinner. But it's a regional thing, not class.

No I agree, it was just a tangent about southerners calling it lunch but still having dinner ladies. Even though down south dinner is the evening meal.

Yes, I’m a ‘lunch and dinner’ person. First job up here in a shop and the manager was asking me to cover ‘dinner breaks’ and was baffled when I said she must’ve got my hours confused because I finish at 2!

We did have dinner ladies at lunch time! I hadn’t spotted that but as a kid I was puzzled why the people who supervised us were the dinner ladies and not the people who made the actual dinner! (I’m ND and always been a pedant!)

Midlander here. Also call it half term.

It’s not half term though. It’s the end of a term. The new term starts at the end of the Easter school holiday.

I'm from the midlands and never heard anyone call them half terms, because they're not half terms. Half terms are the holidays half way through a term. Easter, summer and Xmas are the end of terms.

It’s a class thing, not a north/south thing. WC Londoners very much say dinner/tea, especially the older generations.

Yes, it’s like calling 1.30 “one o’clock”. The more I think about it, the most obvious it is that it’s not a regionalism. It’s just wrong. Obviously it’s caught on in some areas, but that’s contagion.

Exactly. I say lunch and dinner for mid day meal and tea or dinner for the evening meal. I have grown up confused

I say lunch if cold and dinner if hot. Tea if cold and dinner if hot. BUT. Always Sunday lunch 🤷‍♀️

I grew up in the midlands and lots of friends and family still live there. It’s not regional unless it’s a teeny tiny bit of it - I never heard it (left in 2001) none of those still there use ‘half term’ for anything except half term holidays. Why would anyone? It makes no logical sense.

I’m in Cardiff now (near enough). No it isn’t. Not now anyway. Can’t speak for years ago, but I have family in the valleys and they wouldn’t do it.

It’s not about feeling ‘smarter’ - it’s because it’s objectively inaccurate and a bit silly to call a holiday at the end of term a half term holiday.

I live in Cardiff and wouldn't say 'half term' for easter holidays.

"apart from" is disingenuous too, as it implies summer and christmas are the exceptions (so 4 out of 6 holidays are called half term) but nobody is arguing that the ACTUAL half terms should be called anything else!

So you're actually saying "all of the three longer school breaks are called half term except summer and christmas"
so....not 'all' of them - just one out of three, i.e. a minority, with the majority of the longer breaks are called by the name denoting when they occur.

Which you must see doesn't make any sense at all!

If people were saying they called EVERY holiday half term (e.g. October half term, Christmas half term, February half term, Easter half term, June half term, Summer half term) because, as per OPs logic " we have a holiday after every half of a term", it wouldn't be what I do, and I'd still think 'summer half term' sounds utterly weird BUT it would at least be consistent and have some sort of logic.

Saying "we call 1 out of 3 main holidays half term but not the other 2 despite them all meeting the critera of being a holiday after every half of a term" makes no sense at all!

Lots of things are objectively incorrect, doesn't mean calling people dumbasses is suddenly acceptable.

Who actually uses the tearm "dumbass" anyway. Never heard anyone use it

Lots of things, like what?