Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 11 April 2009

Dot Wordsworth anticipates Easter

issue 11 April 2009

What do you call today, the day before Easter? It is increasingly called Easter Saturday. That is what the BBC calls it in its programme guides. Robin Hood and Casualty await us as an alternative to the Easter Vigil. But Easter Monday is the Monday after Easter, and Easter Tuesday the day after that, and so on. The OED refers to these as ‘obvious combinations’, and after Easter Tuesday puts ‘etc’, noting that ‘in ordinary language Easter is often applied to the entire week commencing with Easter Sunday’. Certainly the week beginning on Easter day is Easter week, yet I do not feel in my heart that anyone would now call the Saturday after Easter Easter Saturday. If they did, they would be open to misunderstanding.

The OED allows the term Easter-eve for the day before Easter day.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in