More about holidays

More about holidays

In an earlier post we looked at the meaning of “holiday” and some of the ways we use the word. This time we look at other uses of the word and at similar words.

First of all, an idiom: “busman’s holiday”. We use this when we’re talking about people spending their leisure time doing the same sort of thing that they do when they’re working. For its original meaning, imagine someone who works as a bus driver going on holiday by travelling on a bus. That’s a busman’s holiday.

Some examples of a busman’s holiday might be:

• A cook who spends his weekend cooking meals for his family.
• A teacher who spends her summer holiday working in a summer school.
• A hospital doctor who spends her holiday doing voluntary work in a refugee camp.

And some examples of how we might use the expression in a sentence:

• My husband suggested going to an aqua centre this summer but because I work as a swimming instructor it sounded too much like a busman’s holiday to me.
• He’s a builder during the week and spends the weekends building an extension to his house – a bit of a busman’s holiday, really.

Now some other words linked to holidays: “leave”, “break” and “off duty”.

“Leave” is often used as a military term – when soldiers have a holiday we say they are “on leave”. When sailors are able to spend time on land, we say they are on “shore leave”.

We also use the word about other jobs – particularly office jobs.

Here are some sentences using “leave” in this sense:

• I’m afraid you won’t be able to speak with him today, he’s on leave for the rest of the week.
• If you take this job, you’ll have four weeks’ annual leave, plus bank holidays.

We often use “break” to refer to a short holiday:

• He’s taking a break for a couple of days next week.
• I’m in need of a rest so I’m taking a weekend break from Thursday to Monday.
• We’re going on a city break to Barcelona.

“Off duty” is another word that has a military use. We say that soldiers who aren’t actually working at a particular time are “off duty”. It is also more widely used:

• In your sort of job, I suppose you’re never really off duty.
• I’m feeling very tired so I’m going off duty for a few days.

Finally, some pop culture. “Summer Holiday” is the name of a 1963 film. It involves three bus mechanics converting a double decker bus into a mobile home and travelling to Greece via Yugoslavia (a busman’s holiday, of course). The film starred a young pop singer called Cliff Richard and included a number of songs, including the title track: “Summer Holiday” . The first line of the song is “We’re all going on a summer holiday”. More than 60 years after the song was released, you might still hear someone quoting that line – or actually singing the song – at the beginning of their holiday. Now in his 80s, Cliff Richard – often known simply as “Cliff” – is still popular.

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