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black letter day. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
black letter day, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
black letter day in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Alternative forms
Noun
black letter day (plural black letter days)
- A day marked in ancient calendars in black letter, as distinguished from the more import red letter days; an inauspicious day.
- Coordinate term: red letter day
1877 December 3, George Eliot, “Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones”, in J. W. Cross, editor, George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals, volume III, published 1885, page 233:So pray consider the kill-joy proposition as entirely retracted, and give us something of yourselves, only on simple black-letter days when the Herald Angels have not been raising expectations early in the morning.
1893, Thomas De Quincey, “Conversation and Coleridge”, in Alexander H. Japp, editor, The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, volume II, London: William Heinemann:But the monsters who interrupt men in the middle of a sentence are to be found everywhere; and they are always practising. Red-letter days or black-letter days, festival or fast, makes no difference to them.
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