Word.ws English Dictionary

Roman holiday

Roman holiday noun: a form of public entertainment characterized by violence, degradation and suffering.

Noun

Roman holiday (plural Roman holidays)

  1. A form of public entertainment characterized by violence, degradation and suffering.
    • Two guys swung at each other's legs with whips, skipping into the air. Such Roman holiday high jinks were not reassuring to me.1958, Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

Forms of Roman holiday

pluralRoman holidays

Origin of Roman holiday

From the gladiatorial contests of Ancient Rome.

Questions about Roman holiday

What does Roman holiday mean?
Roman holiday means a form of public entertainment characterized by violence, degradation and suffering.
What part of speech is Roman holiday?
Roman holiday is a noun.
What is the plural of Roman holiday?
The plural of Roman holiday is Roman holidays.

Words near Roman holiday in the dictionary

  1. roman font
  2. roman fonts
  3. Roman gallon
  4. Roman gallons
  5. Roman hands and Russian fingers
  6. Roman holiday
  7. Roman holidays
  8. Roman hyacinth
  9. Roman Kingdom
  10. Roman law
  11. Roman mile

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Roman holiday (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:

Cite this entry: “Roman holiday.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/roman_holiday. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.