Why do we say vacation in the USA while the british say ‘i’m going on a holiday’? If we didn’t use the word holiday, it might make sense (for example, we don’t use the word lou (sp?) for bathroom or anything else) but it is strange to me that since we do use holiday, but not in the same way, but we felt we needed an additional word. Holiday wasn’t good enough?
Anyone know how this word expression came about?
Can’t answer your vacation question, but the word for toilet is “loo”, commonly thought to come from the French “l’eau”, meaning “water” and the first word of “water closet”.
However, there are other theories.
pan
It’s only intuition, but I think holiday is becoming less common in places such as Hong Kong, at any rate, being replaced by vacation or leave. The reason for this might be that holiday has an explicit fun/enjoyment connotation that is lacking in vacation, and even more so in leave. Thus, it sounds more professional and is used more frequently by professionals. The “professionalization” of the workplace, whereby everyone is a professional now, rather than the traditional professions of the past, is a growing phenomenon that might be driving this.
Addendum: what do US schoolchildren call the gap between school terms (…er, ‘semesters’?) Those are also called holidays here, usually in the plural (“what I did in the summer holidays”), although at some posh universities they’re known as “vacs”.
BTW we say “going on holiday”, not “a holiday”.
Unless we’re Cliff Richard.
Vacations, or breaks.
As in Easter vacation (even if they don’t go anywhere), or winter break.
OK, what’s up with personal days? I presume they work something like holidays/vacation but what is a personal day exactly? We don’t have them over here.
And you surely only go on leave if you are in the military? As in AWOL. You don’t go AWOL from a normal job, i guess you go AWOH or AWOV?
Similar to roger thornhill’s Hong Kong example, there is a distinction between vacation days, which are fun and relaxing, and personal days, which are for crappy tasks that have to get done, like waiting for the plumber, or getting car repairs, or going to the doctor.
This way we 'Mericans don’t have to waste our vacation doing unpleasant tasks.
Holiday, originally holy day…in the US we generally used it for days of specific significance (whether “holy” or not), Christmas, Labor Day, Independence Day, etc.
Vacation has the same root as “vacate” (to leave) so it seems actually better suited for when you are taking time off work and going somewhere.
In the US, most employers have traditionally granted their workers a certain number of days for “vacation” and a certain number of days for “sick leave” each year.
Some employers have revised this policy, and simply grant “personal days” which avoids having to track two separate catetgories, and also eliminates the abuse of “calling in sick” when your vacation is all used up.
Also, depending on the employer, you use a personal day for things like a funeral… that way they can limit the number of times you do things like this in a year.
Finally, we get a ‘personal holiday’ here where I work. This is meant for you to use anytime you want, in case you have a holiday that you need to celebrate (for example, my uncle celebrates ‘moon day’ on july 20th - the date of the moon landing) but the company in general doesn’t recognize.
If you get to the end of the year and you haven’t used your personal days and/or your personal holidays, most people I know just throw them onto a vacation.
Just to make life confusing, my mother works nights as a nurse, and therefore has had to work basically every Christmas, most Thanksgivings and a good handful of Labor Days, July 4ths and other such days. Legally, however, these are holidays, so she gets a random night off and it’s labeled for the holiday she worked. So she might get July 10th off, but on her schedule, it’ll say, July 4th Holiday.
I always found this comical
Actually,I’m not in the military but in my job it’s all called leave- annual leave, personal leave and sick leave. The difference is in the rules. Sick leave can only be taken for medical reasons (illness and doctors appointments), doesn’t need to be requested in advance and carries over forever. Annual leave supposedly must be requested in advance, and carries over to a point. On April 1, I can only have 300 hours of annual leave.Anything over is lost. I get five days of personal leave on my anniversary date each year, they don’t carry over at all, they don’t require advance notice to take but can be denied, and can be taken for any reason or no reason at all.
There are a few other examples of this kind of thing. British people say “in hospital” instead of “in the hospital”.
However, a similar tendency has become noticeable in American broadcast-speak, in which the article is dropped. The morning music program on my local NPR outlet tells us that they’re going to have the band XYZ in studio. Most annoying of all, now when a freeway accident or other traffic problem occurs, the smashed cars or spilled loads are in lanes. I don’t know if that’s becoming general, or just the NPR station I listen to, which represents 99% of my radio listening.
Reported as possible spam.
This made me wonder what is the norm for leave/holidays/vacations etc on each side of the Atlantic. Over here we get 20 days minimum paid holiday (there are many different rules for calculating this) plus the 8 bank holidays which are normally paid. The Civil Service (Government employees) used to be 'allowed a certain number of paid sick days each year and it was normal to take them, sick or not. Elsewhere some employees get paid for sick leave, and some do not.
That’s another question. Do Americans get paid when they are off sick?
There is no minimum paid vacation in the US. Certainly federally, but I don’t think there are even any states that require it. Holidays (by which I mean Christmas, etc.) are generally completely optional in the private sector.
Some states do require that workers get (unpaid) days off after so many days working, I think.
Some do. It’s usually not a legal requirement, but I think it is in a few places.
Many do, typically the white collar workers who can demand such things.
Unfortunately many, typically the lower classes who often end up in fields like food service, do not:
I’d like to see a label indicating the sick leave policy required at businesses that serve food.
Most differences of this sort come from the fact that England has so many dialects and whichever gained ascendance on this or the other side of the pond was probably purely random. I know I have seen this is an explanation for the many ways to pronounce -ough, even in England, based on the many dialects that came together to produce London English. Of course, some of the differences (“lorry” vs. “truck”, “boot” vs. “trunk”) arose because the thing itself came after the countries separated.
US:
Holiday: a day off associated with a fixed day or annual event (Christmas, Independence Day, etc.) the actual day you take off may vary- for example, if the holiday itself is on a weekend, you may get Monday off.
Vacation/Annual leave: a set number of days per yet that may be taken off, usually to travel. These must be scheduled in advance and approved.
Personal days/paid time off/personal leave: Meant to cover illness, family obligations, appointments and other unscheduled one-off events. May be used at any time, but may need approval.
Sick leave: some organizations have sick leave rather than personal leave. This is supposed to be only for illness, and may require documentation from a doctor (especially if it lasts longer than a couple days).
Family leave: meant to take care of sick family members.
Most full-time jobs offer some combination of these. Part time and low wage jobs generally do not. There are usually rules about how much you can accumulate across years.