Word.ws English Dictionary

seize the day

seize the day verb: to enjoy the present and not worry about the future; to live for the moment.

Verb

seize the day (third-person singular simple present seizes the day, present participle seizing the day, simple past and past participle seized the day)

  1. (idiomatic) To enjoy the present and not worry about the future; to live for the moment.
  2. (idiomatic) To make the most of today by achieving fulfillment in a philosophical or spiritual sense.
  3. (idiomatic) To attack the day's efforts with vigor and purpose.
    • IN toasting the beginning of a new relationship between China and the United States in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing twenty years ago, I quoted from a poem in which Mao Zedong exhorted his followers to work for the victory of communism: "So many deeds cry out to be done always urgently....1992, Richard Nixon, “The Real World”, in Seize the Moment, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 13–14

Synonyms of seize the day

Forms of seize the day

third-person singular presentseizes the day
present participleseizing the day
past participleseized the day
pastseized the day

Origin of seize the day

Calque of Latin carpe diem, originally meaning "enjoy the day", literally "pluck (or harvest) the day", from a poem by the ancient poet Horace. In Latin, it was common to use carpo (“to pluck something, pick off”) metaphorically to express enjoying a period of time. The use of seize is a traditional mistranslation originating from a confusion with cape, singular imperative of capio (“to seize something, grab”).

Questions about seize the day

What does seize the day mean?
Seize the day means to enjoy the present and not worry about the future; to live for the moment.
What part of speech is seize the day?
Seize the day is a verb.
What is the past tense of seize the day?
The past tense of seize the day is seized the day.

Words near seize the day in the dictionary

  1. seiza
  2. seizable
  3. seize
  4. seize on
  5. seize out
  6. seize the day
  7. seize the initiative
  8. seize the opportunity
  9. seize up
  10. seize upon
  11. seize-up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: seize the day (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-seize the day.ogg.

Cite this entry: “seize the day.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/seize_the_day. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.