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.

This really knocks the regional thing on the head then! Maybe as someone else said it's spread via a particular generation, social media influence or something.

Exactly what I was coming on to say. It's clearly NOT about a holiday every half of a term because 2 out of 3 'main' holidays are not called half term. Not sure if it's regional. My sister has taught in China and the Middle East and main holidays are never half term. However, I have heard it creeping up with my children who even referred to Christmas as half term 😲! I think it's a lazy younger generation thing.

I live in the North-West.

Christmas
Easter
Summer
October and February - half term
May - whit week.

At least when I and my DC were at school.

As far as I know it's still the same.

Whitsun feels old fashioned as a term to me, something you'd be more familiar with if you regularly attend church, which was more common in my parents' generation (born 50s/60s) than mine (born 80s/90s)

Yep, not sure why to be honest. It hasn't happened here but I've seen it a lot on Mumsnet and there are quite a few posts on this thread about it too.

We don’t do it, in NI.
Its specific hols are denoted by the event eg “easter” “Christmas” “summer” and only the half term breaks get called “half term”

I guess part of the confusion is that when schools refer to 'half term' they mean half of that term (summer, autumn, winter) whereas when we refer to 'half term' we've removed the 'holiday' bit of 'half-term holiday'.

And someone else has said Feb is a long weekend rather than a week? I really love the differences in Scotland compared to here. I can almost guarantee someone's Scottish when they use the word "outwith."

For some reason, this is the first holiday where I’ve been hearing people call it half term and for some reason I can’t fathom, it’s irritating me - my kid’s an adult now! But it is irritating me beyond what is normal!

It’s summer holidays, October half term; Christmas holidays, February half term; Easter holidays; May/June half term.

I find it disproportionately irritating too. I may have to mute this thread, even tho most people seem to agree with me!

My husband calls all the holidays half term, including the summer. It does my head in and I feel compelled to correct him every single time he does it. He doesn’t care, just shrugs and carries on doing it so I guess it’s my problem.

Far north east/Scottish border area

Blackberry week
Christmas
Half term
Easter
Whitsun/half term
Summer

I'm not sure why social media would have exacerbated the use of it though - anyone have a theory for that?

My assumption as for why "term" might have been more well known as a word in the past, is that at some point, the school calendar must have been standardised in England, since the holidays usually match up everywhere, and I would have thought that would have been somewhere around my parents' generation, possibly postwar - but thinking about it, I'm possibly conflating that with my mum's confusion over "Year X" because when she was at school it was fourth form/fifth form, infants, juniors etc. I actually have no idea when the current school calendar was standardised.

Blackberry week sounds FANTASTIC

I'm in Northumberland and we use it here too. Especially in more formal correspondence.

Calling every holiday half term is just needlessly confusing!

I don’t know if it’s regional. I’m East Midlands which is a very different kettle of fish to “The Midlands” and we never used it like this, just called it summer, Easter and Christmas hols like normal people.

Maybe the changes have become more widespread due to social media, but I moved to this area over 25 years ago, and the use of ‘half term’ for the Easter break from school was already well in use. Also “six weeks holidays” for the summer, which I’ve only seen one other poster mention.

So certainly regional in origin.

The mention of holidays originally meaning holy days is a good example of how language change works.

I wonder if the social media thing exacerbated it's use because it's so much easier to have exposure to people from all over. Compared with my parents generation when it was extremely rare to be exposed to such large numbers of people your age from either different regions or different countries. Yes there was TV and radio obviously but we as a population couldn't consume hours of tiktok videos, Instagram reels, Mumsnet threads etc.

I remember as a teen hearing the word "peng" for good looking and "bare" to mean "has a lot of something." Both absolutely nonsensical but I used to compete at cross country all over the UK and teens everywhere was using these terms. Whereas as we've apparently shown, something ike Whitsun isn't used as widely, maybe because it wasn't a term broadcasted over social media when the generation before mine was growing up.

Oh six weeks holidays is a good one, we did use that when I was at school.

Yes but Whitsun is the older term which has fallen out of use, not a newer term like peng was new slang.

Summer holidays and six weeks holidays are interchangeable here!

Me too. Taught for 20 year in schools in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Have never heard anything other than actual half term referred to as half term. Others are Christmas, Easter and Summer

This was what I mean though, has something like half term fallen into favour vs Whitsun for the same reason peng appeared, these new words or "new uses" spreading faster because of social media?