ˈfield-ˌday
1. a. Mil. A day on which troops are drawn up for exercise in field evolutions; a military review.
| 1747 Scheme Equip. Men of War 32 These periodical Intervals of eating and drinking..are to the Citizens as it were Field Days, for improving..their Valour. 1832 Regul. Instr. Cavalry iii. 62 Almost every movement at a Field Day should be followed by an Advance in Line. 1869 E. A. Parkes Pract. Hygiene (ed. 3) 624 Our present field-days represent the very acme and culminating point of war. |
b. transf. and fig. A day occupied with brilliant or exciting events; a time of great opportunity or success.
| 1827 Creevey Let. 26 Mar. (1934) ii. xiii. 236 Saturday was a considerable field day in Arlington Street,..and a very merry jolly dinner and evening we had. 1848 Thackeray Bk. Snobs xx, The mean pomp and ostentation which distinguish our banquets on grand field-days. 1855 Bagehot Coll. Works (1965) I. 313 A ‘field-day’ controversy is a fine thing. 1857 Hughes Tom Brown ii. viii, This terrible field-day passed over without any severe visitations in the shape of punishments. 1864 Knight Passages Work. Life I. i. 209 Thursday..is to be a great field-day in the Commons. 1925 E. F. Norton Fight for Everest: 1924 ii. 45 The two experts, who had for days been working every afternoon, and often late into the night, put in a regular field-day. 1953 A. Huxley Let. 8 Dec. (1969) 689 Industrial agriculture is having a field day in the million acres of barren plain now irrigated. 1969 New Yorker 12 Apr. 98/2 The human-factors men have been having a field day with it. |
2. A day spent in the field. a. Hunting. A day on which the hunt meets.
| 1823 Byron Juan xiii. cviii, Sometimes a dance (though rarely on field days, For then the gentlemen were rather tired). |
b. ‘A day when explorations, scientific investigations, etc., as of a society, are carried on in the field’ (Cent. Dict.).
| a 1878 G. G. Scott Recoll. (1879) viii. 354 We had a delightful field-day in the abbey. |