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red-letter day

World English Dictionary

red-letter day

—n
	a memorably important or happy occasion

[C18: from the red letters used in ecclesiastical calendars to indicate saints' days and feasts]

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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Red-letter day is always a great word to know.

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the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

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American Heritage

Cultural Dictionary

red-letter day definition

A special or memorable day; the expression refers to the old custom of printing holidays in red on calendars: “John got promoted and engaged to be married yesterday; it was truly a red-letter day for him.”

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Slang Dictionary

red-letter day definition

n.
an important day that might well be marked in red on the calendar. : Today was a red-letter day in our history.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

red-letter day

A special occasion, as in When Jack comes home from his tour of duty, that'll be a red-letter day. This term alludes to the practice of marking feast days and other holy days in red on church calendars, dating from the 1400s. [c. 1700]

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"We visited Whitman the next morning ... and were much interested and provoked. He is apparently the greatest democrat the world has seen. Kings and aristocracy go by the board at once, as they have long deserved to. A remarkably strong though coarse nature, of a sweet disposition, and much prized by his friends. Though peculiar and rough in his exterior, his skin ... red, he is essentially a gentleman. I am still somewhat in a quandry about him,—feel that he is essentially strange to me, at any rate; but I am surprised by the sight of him. He is very broad, but, as I have said, not fine. He said that I misapprehended him. I am not quite sure that I do. He told us that he loved to ride up and down Broadway all day on an omnibus, sitting beside the driver, listening to the roar of the carts, and sometimes gesticulating and declaiming Homer at the top of his voice. He has long been an editor and writer for the newspapers,... but now has no employment but to read and write in the forenoon, and walk in the afternoon, like the rest of the scribbling gentry."

-Henry David Thoreau

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