Word.ws English Dictionary

half term

half term noun: a short school holiday in the middle of the term, generally lasting a week.

Noun

half term (plural half terms)

  1. (UK) A short school holiday in the middle of the term, generally lasting a week.
    • I have just visited him at his mother's home where he is spending half term and we reminisced while looking at his photo album.1979, SWT, Social Work Today
    • Georgia's not a very good correspondent, which is perfectly reasonable at her age, but she didn't come down for half term and then she didn't come for Easter either.2011, Marcia Willett, Hattie's Mill, Hachette UK, →ISBN
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see half, term.

Examples of half term in a sentence

  • The boy seems to be coping quite well, although I had a feeling he wasn't too happy about spending half term in Crete with his old grandpa."2011, Patricia Fenn, Poseidon's Trident, Andrews UK Limited, →ISBN:
  • "We had an extraordinary February half term - I think we had 22,000 visitors in the seven days.2020 June 3, Sam Mullins OBE discusses with Stefanie Foster, “LTM: a new chapter begins at 40”, in Rail, page 54:

Forms of half term

pluralhalf terms
alternative formhalf-term

Questions about half term

What does half term mean?
Half term means a short school holiday in the middle of the term, generally lasting a week.
How do you use half term in a sentence?
The boy seems to be coping quite well, although I had a feeling he wasn't too happy about spending half term in Crete with his old grandpa."
What part of speech is half term?
Half term is a noun.
What is the plural of half term?
The plural of half term is half terms.

Words near half term in the dictionary

  1. half stacks
  2. half staff
  3. half staffs
  4. half step
  5. half steps
  6. half term
  7. half terms
  8. half the battle
  9. half the story
  10. half time
  11. half times

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: half term (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “half term.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/half_term. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.