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banyan day. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
banyan day, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
banyan day in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
According to the OED, the term is borrowed from the Banyans in the East Indies, a caste that ate nothing that had life.
Noun
banyan day (plural banyan days)
- (dated, UK, nautical, idiomatic) In British naval tradition, a day of the week when galley kitchens served no meat on board ship.
1819, James Hardy Vaux, Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux, Chapter XVIII, p. 204-205:This was a favourable circumstance in one respect to myself and the ship's company, for as Tuesday is a sumptuous day in point of allowance in the navy, beef and pudding being the prescribed fare for dinner, we by this accident feasted two days together; whereas had it occurred on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, two successive banyan (or starvation) days would have been our dismal portion.
- (UK, nautical, idiomatic) A picnic or cookout for the ship's crew.
See also
References
- ^ Patrick O'Brian (1989) The Thirteen-Gun Salute, →ISBN, page 27:
Then again following the sea was what they were used to, and they liked what they were used to, a regular life with no changes of any kind, no mad interference with the steady succession of salt pork on Sunday and Thursday, salt beef on Tuesday and Saturday, with banian-days between; the sea itself could be relied upon to provide all the variety that could possibly be desired.
- [Francis] Grose [et al.] (1811) “Banyan day”, in Lexicon Balatronicum. A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. , London: C. Chappell, , →OCLC.