thanksgiving

Pluralthanksgivings

1. 1
   proper noun · ThanksgivingCanadaUS

   A national holiday of giving thanks, held on the fourth Thursday of November in the US and the second Monday of October in Canada.

   She hasn't missed a Thanksgiving with her family in twenty years.

   Their Thanksgivings were loud, crowded affairs, with cousins sleeping on every couch.

   Note

   The holiday's name takes no article: people go home for Thanksgiving, or are home at Thanksgiving, as Theodore Sedgwick hoped to be when he wrote to his wife in 1788. The plural counts a family's celebrations over the years, so a writer can remember old Thanksgivings at home, or say that our Thanksgivings are always quiet.

2. 2
   proper noun · ThanksgivingCanadaUS

   The long holiday weekend that includes Thanksgiving Day.

   Highway traffic peaks over Thanksgiving as families travel home for the long weekend.

   We spent Thanksgiving at the cottage and didn't get back until late Monday night.

   Note

   Since the holiday itself falls on a Monday in Canada and on a Thursday in the United States, the weekend has a different shape on each side of the border: Saturday through Monday for Canadians, usually Thursday through Sunday for Americans. In speech the bare name often covers the whole stretch, as in traveling over Thanksgiving.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The expression of gratitude, or a particular act of giving thanks.

   The meeting opened in a spirit of thanksgiving for the volunteers who had rebuilt the school.

   When the rescue boat reached them, the stranded hikers offered a quiet prayer of thanksgiving.

   Similargratitude, thanks

   Oppositeingratitude

   Note

   The compound means just what its parts say, thanks plus giving, and it usually follows of: a shout of thanksgiving, a prayer of thanksgiving, the spirit of thanksgiving. Dianne Feinstein, at a 1979 service honoring Harvey Milk and George Moscone, set that spirit against mourning. Written lowercase, the word stays apart from the holiday.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A short prayer of grace or blessing said at a meal.

   The abbot rose at the end of the meal and offered a brief thanksgiving.

   At every family supper, her father led the thanksgiving before anyone touched a fork.

   Similargrace, blessing

5. 5
   proper noun · Thanksgiving

   A celebration in another culture that resembles the North American holiday of giving thanks, especially a harvest festival.

   Every autumn the Lee family flies to Busan to visit relatives for Korean Thanksgiving.

   For many families, Sukkot works as a Jewish Thanksgiving, with meals eaten outdoors in a harvest hut.

   Note

   Other peoples' festivals get the name by comparison, with a nationality or faith in front of it: Korean Thanksgiving, the Jewish Thanksgiving, the German Thanksgiving Day. It lends the familiar North American holiday to a festival that already has its own name, Chusok for Koreans and Sukkot in Jewish tradition, so it explains rather than translates.

6. 6
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A public celebration held to give thanks for divine favor, such as a good harvest.

   The governor proclaimed a day of public thanksgiving when the epidemic finally passed.

   The village's harvest thanksgiving ended with a supper in the church hall.

   Note

   In church life the phrase harvest thanksgiving names one such occasion: in Harold Bindloss's The Dust of Conflict, women carry wheat-ears and ivy down the aisle to dress the church for it while the vicar waits on the chancel steps. The word is countable here, so a town or parish can hold, or proclaim, a thanksgiving.

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