To get irritated by people who call every school holiday Half Term?

[sorrynotathome]

How can you not know that the half term holiday is in the middle of the term? After the first half and before the second half. At the end of term is the Easter, Summer or Christmas holidays. Do some people think Half Term is an English word for schools being closed? Now I’ve typed term so much it’s started to look weird.

what a weird thing to get worked up about?!

for anyone not involved int he school system, it's hard to keep track of wll the holidays. who even cares what they're all called???

I completely agree, drives me mad!

This annoys me too! Solidarity!

🤣🤣 this irks me too!! And I’ve even received marketing e-mails with the term on. It’s not rocket science.

Yes!!! This annoys me so incredibly much! I’ve even worked in a school & school staff done this too!
I have moaned about this before to my DH & friends, who all look at me like I’ve lost the plot, but it really does irritate me!

I think people are just becoming more stupid. I don’t know what the cause is.

It annoys me but it is what our school calls it. They have 6 half terms and no terms. Every break is half term.

It was not like that when I grew up in the South. But it’s weird “up North” where I am now.

We now have ‘term breaks’. Autumn, spring and summer term. I don’t like it. Presumably they can’t use Easter and Christmas anymore…

so when i first had kids (im not from here) i did this - i was absolutely unaware there were different names for the breaks. Sorry!

If that was the case it would be renamed Winter, Spring and Summer not just multiple half terms.

I'm not British and it was confusing to me at the start, sometimes I still accidently call other holidays "half term", but my husband corrects me so I assumed British people wouldn't get confused.

We live abroad and half term doesn’t exist, we just have 4 x 2 week holidays and a 6 week summer break. My DM refers the Autumn and February ones as half term and can’t understand why we don’t have one in May. They break up for summer in June! But I can’t say I’d get worked up about it?

Well this has made my day! I thought I would be flamed so I'm delighted to see so many people agree. My post was meant to be light-hearted and I'm certainly not "worked up" as some have suggested.

This, however, has blown my mind and I cannot compute:
"They have 6 half terms and no terms. Every break is half term."

Can someone please make sense of it!

It annoys me too.
I have heard the Summer holidays being referred to as " half term".

this thread has made me realise the term Whitsun (in relation to school terms) makes me feel weird and irritable

Pissed me off even more when teaching when colleagues did this!

I really don't care what people call it. All I know is that it means time off work 🤣

DH calls them all ‘mid term’. Drives me bananas.

My partner does this, I’m a teacher, fucks me off no end. I used to correct him but now I just watch a little piece of my soul fly out the window every time he says it. Christmas and summer holidays are also referred to as half term. Idiotic.

I wouldn't say it bothers me because 99% of Mumsnet annoyances go over the top of my head as I just cant get worked up about most things - but I do find it strange that a lot of English parents struggle with school holidays. We lived in the Middle East and the holidays were all based around the Muslim calendar so difficult to plan as they changed each year. Some years there'd be half terms, some just Eid breaks etc but its really quite simple here - terms end at Christmas, Easter and 'The 6 weeks holidays' with a half term in between. Its been the same forever and doesn't take much to grasp.

My husband literally has no idea when the school holidays are. He doesn't even seem to be able to give an approximate - something happening in early June - will that be the school holidays? Late September - will the boys be off? 😂

It is maddening. Especially for me as I work in HE so we have actual terms and I’m also a flipping governor.

But the school calendar has 6 half terms on it. No terms. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Yes every time I hear it it annoys me I have no idea why.

But is everything not a half of a whole???

Yes, my husband does this and also has no idea when any of the holidays are despite them not having really changed since we were kids.

It’s irritated me since long before I had DC because I work in travel.

’We want to go away in half-term’

’Ok, February, May or October?’

’August’