May Day

noun

the first day of May, long celebrated with various festivities, as the crowning of the May queen, dancing around the Maypole, and, in recent years, often marked by labor parades and political demonstrations.

Origin:
1225–75; Middle English

Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun

the international radiotelephone distress signal, used by ships and aircraft.

Origin:
1925–30; < French (venez) m'aider (come) help me!

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Collins

World English Dictionary

Mayday (ˈmeɪˌdeɪ)

—n
	the international radiotelephone distress signal

[C20: phonetic spelling of French m'aidez help me]

May Day

—n
	a. the first day of May, traditionally a celebration of the coming of spring: in some countries now observed as a holiday in honour of workers
	b. (as modifier): May-Day celebrations

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

May Day

"first of May," mid-15c.. Accounts of merrymaking on this date are attested from mid-13c. Synonymous with "communist procession" from at least 1906. The May Queen seems to be a Victorian re-invented tradition.

mayday

"distress call," 1927, from Fr. m'aider, shortening of venez m'aider "come help me!"

Matching Quote

"One would like to know more of that race, now extinct, whose seines lie rotting in the garrets of their children, who openly professed the trade of fishermen, and even fed their townsmen creditably, not skulking through the meadows to a rainy afternoon sport. Dim visions we still get of miraculous draughts of fishes, and heaps uncountable by the riverside, from the tales of our seniors sent on horseback in their childhood from the neighboring towns, perched on saddle-bags, with instructions to get the one bag filled with shad, the other with alewives. At least one memento of those days may still exist in the memory of this generation, in the familiar appellation of a celebrated train-band of this town, whose untrained ancestors stood creditably at Concord North Bridge. Their captain, a man of piscatory tastes, having duly warned his company to turn out on a certain day, they, like obedient soldiers, appeared promptly on parade at the appointed time, but, unfortunately, they went undrilled, except in the manvres of a soldier's wit and unlicensed jesting, that May day; for their captain, forgetting his own appointment, and warned only by the favorable aspect of the heavens, as he had often done before, went a-fishing that afternoon, and his company thenceforth was known to old and young, grave and gay, as "The Shad.""

-Henry David Thoreau

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May Day

May Day

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