‖ Quatorze Juillet
(katɔrz ʒɥijɛ)
Also quatorze juillet and ellipt. quatorze.
[Fr., lit. fourteenth of July.]
In France, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille (see bastille n. 3) on 14 July 1789, observed as a national holiday. Also attrib.
| 1934 Webster, Quatorze juillet or (le) quatorze. 1951 R. Senhouse tr. Colette's Last of Chéri 196 One day, not long before the Quatorze Juillet, Charlotte Peloux was lunching with them. 1955 Times 18 July 6/1 Le Quatorze Juillet—never referred to by French people under any other name, although its official title is fête nationale and its most common English name, more explicitly, ‘Bastille Day’—has come and gone, as in other years, in a flurry of military parades, undisciplined queues for free matinées at State theatres, firework displays, and ubiquitous bals populaires in the streets. 1966 H. Yoxall Fashion of Life xxiv. 233 A firework display..far more lavish than anything I'd seen in Paris on the Quatorze Juillet. 1971 Guardian 15 July 13/4 The ‘quatorze’ is..the type of public jamboree which carries no obligations. 1977 E. Ambler Send no more Roses viii. 175 It's the Quatorze today. The servants want to..go to the local fête. Ibid. x. 214 We had eaten simply..so that the servants could get off early to their local Quatorze juillet fête. |