Definition of "weekend"

“They can live upon barley-meal without a morsel of meat from week-end to week-end, can these miserable Sawnies,” quoth another.

1874 July–December, W. Senior, “With the Herring Fleet”, in The Gentleman's Magazine, page 704

[…] often took a few boys down there for what we North Country folk call the week-end — Saturday and Sunday; it was also used as a sanatorium if required.

1903, Francis Markham with Sir Clements Robert Markham, Recollections of a town boy at Westminster, 1849–1855, page 34

I love a phrase of Dizzy's in one of his later letters to Lady Bradford, whom he reproaches for her addiction to what we now call week-end visits to country houses: “the monotony of organized platitude.”

1921 June 21, The Earl of Oxford and Asquith, K.G., chapter XX, in Memories and Reflections 1852–1927, volume 2, Cassell and Company, published 1928, page 197