Word.ws English Dictionary

open season

open season noun: a period of time during the calendar year when authorities within a jurisdiction permit the unrestricted hunting of one or more kinds of animal wildlife.

Noun

open season (countable and uncountable, plural open seasons)

  1. (sometimes) A period of time during the calendar year when authorities within a jurisdiction permit the unrestricted hunting of one or more kinds of animal wildlife.
    • "But there weren't many crabs in those days," the old man wandered on. "They were fished out, and they were great delicacies. The open season was only a month long, too."1912, Jack London, chapter 1, in The Scarlet Plague (fiction)
  2. (figuratively, often) A situation in which someone is endangered, blamed, harassed, or opposed in a sustained manner by a number of others; a situation in which something is endangered or otherwise opposed.
    • In the country of the Clantons there was always an open season on any one of his name.1919, William MacLeod Raine, “Prologue”, in A Man Four-Square (fiction)
    • She's fair game, Joe. It's always open season on princesses.1953, Dalton Trumbo, Ian McLellan Hunter, John Dighton, Roman Holiday, spoken by Irving Radovich (Eddie Albert)
  3. (idiomatic, often) A situation or period in which some activity is routinely carried on.
    • "My dear Miss Parker, this is the open season on terrible practical jokes."1921, Peter B. Kyne, chapter 15, in The Pride of Palomar (fiction), page 155
    • The open season on culture in Manhattan used to begin with the first stroke of a Metropolitan Opera baton.1959 October 26, “Music: Curtains Up!”, in Time, →OCLC, archived from the original on 04 Aug 2014

Examples of open season in a sentence

  • The court thus overruled all the states' protective laws, except against outright fraud, and declared open season on any products not protected by patents.1964 March 20, “Patents: Knocking Down the Pole”, in Time, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 Apr 2016:
  • The paparazzi and gossip hounds have declared open season on celebrities.2009, Tawny Weber, Coming on Strong (fiction), →ISBN, page 37:
  • On aviation, the Chancellor seemed to suggest it was open season for expanding airports across the UK, irrespective of the fact that flying is a major source of CO² in the atmosphere.2025 February 19, Christian Wolmar, “Reeves talks of 'growth' but pays lip service to the railway”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 35:

Antonyms of open season

Forms of open season

pluralopen seasons

Questions about open season

What does open season mean?
Open season means a period of time during the calendar year when authorities within a jurisdiction permit the unrestricted hunting of one or more kinds of animal wildlife.
How do you use open season in a sentence?
The court thus overruled all the states' protective laws, except against outright fraud, and declared open season on any products not protected by patents.
What part of speech is open season?
Open season is a noun.
What is the plural of open season?
The plural of open season is open seasons.

Words near open season in the dictionary

  1. open rotor
  2. open sandwich
  3. open sandwiches
  4. open sea
  5. open seas
  6. open season
  7. open seasons
  8. open seating
  9. open secret
  10. open secrets
  11. open sesame

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: open season (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-open season.ogg.

Cite this entry: “open season.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/open_season. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.