Definition of "holiday"

holiday

/ˈhɒlɪdeɪ/

noun
plural holidays
1. A day on which a festival, religious event, or national celebration is traditionally observed.
  Quotations
  Monday, January 18, was the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. In the morning I held a reception for the diplomatic representatives of other nations in the inner quadrangle at Georgetown, addressing them from the steps of Old North Building.
  2005, Bill Clinton, My Life‎, volume II, New York: Vintage Books, page 5
2. A day declared free from work by the state or government.
3. (chiefly UK, Australia) A period of one or more days taken off work for leisure and often travel; often plural.
  Quotations
  No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or […] . And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.
  1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., page 46
  Climb aboard a butterfly and take off in the breeze. Let your worries flutter by and do the things you please. In the land where dollar bills are falling off the trees. On a dreamer’s holiday. […] Make it a long vacation. Time, there is plenty of. You need no reservation. Just bring along the one you love.
  1949 August 11, “A Dreamer’s Holiday”, performed by Perry Como, The Fontaine Sisters, and The Mitchell Ayres Orchestra
4. (chiefly UK, Australia) A period during which pupils do not attend their school; often plural; rarely used for students at university (usually: vacation).
5. (finance) A period during which, by agreement, the usual payments are not made.
6. A gap in coverage, e.g. of paint on a surface, or sonar imagery.
verb
third-person singular simple present holidays, present participle holidaying, simple past and past participle holidayed
1. (intransitive) To take a period of time away from work or study.
2. (Britain, intransitive) To spend a period of time in recreational travel.