Word.ws English Dictionary

yuletide

Syllables: Yule·tideUK/ˈjuːlˌtaɪd//ˈjulˌtaɪd/

yuletide noun: the flower Camellia sasanqua, native to Japan and nearby islands. Also the alternative letter-case form of Yuletide.

yuletide: the flower Camellia sasanqua, native to Japan and nearby islands
Image: KENPEI, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

yuletide (countable and uncountable, plural yuletides)

  1. The flower Camellia sasanqua, native to Japan and nearby islands.
    Synonyms:
    sasanqua

Noun (2) capitalized: Yuletide

Yuletide (countable and uncountable, plural Yuletides)

  1. (dated) The period around Christmas; the Christmas season, Christmastime; specifically, Christmas itself.
    • Deck the halls with boughs of holly, / Fa la la la la la la la la! / 'Tis the season to be jolly, / Fa la la la la la la la la! / Don we now our gay apparel, / Fa la la la la la la la la! / Troll the ancient yuletide carol, / Fa la la la la la la la la!1862, modified from Thomas Oliphant's original, “Deck the Halls”, in Jerry Snyder’s Easy Chord Christmas Guitar Book, Miami Beach, Fla.: Hansen House, published [19—?], →OCLC, page 17
    • What did the first locked drawer contain? […] a Yuletide card, bearing on it a pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend Mizpah, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders: from Mr and Mrs M. Comerford, the versicle: May this Yuletide bring to thee, Joy and peace and welcome glee...1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 17: Ithaca]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part III [Nostos], page 673
    Synonyms:
    Christmastide
  2. (dated, or Germanic Neo-Paganism) The period of celebration of a pre-Christian festival associated with the (northern) winter solstice, later absorbed into the festival of Christmas (but sometimes recreated by modern neo-pagans).
    • For this is the Yuletide, and the heathen people of the forest are gathered at the thunder-oak of Geismar to worship their god, Thor.1902 October, Henry van Dyke [Jr.], “The First Christmas-tree”, in The Blue Flower, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, →OCLC, section II, page 277
    • It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was...1923 October, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Festival”, in Weird Tales, volume 5, number 1, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., published January 1925; reprinted in Lin Carter, editor...
  3. (Australia, regional) The period of southern winter in the middle of the year, sometimes celebrated in the colder, snowy regions of Australia with allusions to Christmas, which originated as a marketing gimmick.
    • Note that the colder winter months (June–Aug) are the busiest season. This period is known as Yuletide—the locals' version of the Christmas period, when most places offer traditional Christmas dinners and roaring log fires.2010, Lee Atkinson, Ron Crittall, Marc Llewellyn, Lee Mylne, “New South Wales”, in Emil J. Ross, editor, Frommer’s Australia 2010, Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Publishing, →ISBN, page 186

Also used as

yuletide is also the alternative letter-case form of Yuletide.

Synonyms of yuletide

Forms of yuletide

pluralyuletides
pluralYuletides

Origin of yuletide

From Yule (“Germanic Winter Festival”) + -tide (“period around a festival, season”); compare Swedish juletid.

Though attested late (c. 1475), probably dates back to Old English *ġēoltīd (literally “Christmas season”). See there for more; equivalent to Yule + -tide.

Questions about yuletide

What does yuletide mean?
Yuletide means the flower Camellia sasanqua, native to Japan and nearby islands.
What part of speech is yuletide?
Yuletide is a noun.
How do you pronounce yuletide?
Yuletide is pronounced /ˈjuːlˌtaɪd/ (UK).
What is the plural of yuletide?
The plural of yuletide is yuletides.

Words near yuletide in the dictionary

  1. Yule-Simon distribution
  2. Yulecart
  3. Yulefest
  4. Yulemonth
  5. Yules
  6. yuletide
  7. yuletides
  8. Yuletree
  9. Yulgyal
  10. Yuli
  11. Yulia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yuletide (page history and authors); Yuletide (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-yuletide.wav, en-au-Yuletide.ogg.

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