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Sunday

nounverbadverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈsʌn.deɪ//
  • //ˈsʌn.di//
  • //ˈsʊn.deɪ//
  • //ˈsʊn.də//

The first day of the week in many religious traditions, and the seventh day of the week in systems using the ISO 8601 standard; the Christian Sabbath; it follows Saturday and precedes Monday.

noun

  1. 1

    The first day of the week in many religious traditions, and the seventh day of the week in systems using the ISO 8601 standard; the Christian Sabbath; it follows Saturday and precedes Monday.

    Every day is like Sunday / Every day is silent and grey

    And after missing a simple header in the first half, the Manchester United striker ensured England topped Group D to set up a quarter-final meeting with Italy in Kiev on Sunday.

    But on that Sunday it was filled with Episcopalians from around the country who had traveled to South Bend to attend his campaign launch.

  2. 2

    informalA newspaper published on Sunday.

    I gave him the switchboard with my love, went down to the Savoy for breakfast and read the Sundays.

  3. 3

    informalA comic strip published in a Sunday newspaper.

    It just wasn't his thing, although he did beautiful Sundays for however long he did them. So as soon as he could, he hired someone to do the Sundays. Karen and I would do some dailies, but we were the Sunday artists.

  4. 4

    informalDescribes someone who does something occasionally or casually, and therefore without skill.

    Your face is the color of a Sunday swimmer who swallowed half the pool.

    My limbs felt hollow, empty. Empty, empty, empty. A Sunday cyclist on a casual ride could have passed me.

    Below, a Sunday painter dabs at a canvas near the Pont Neuf, his suit as natty as any Landru wore. He tilts his bowler hat and steps back to view his efforts. 'What is a Sunday painter?' Matisse says aloud. 'When we start, we are all Sunday painters.'

    If he even tries it, then his addiction will take over again. An alcoholic can never become a “Sunday drinker”.

  5. 5

    informalDescribes something particularly fine and elegant, particularly something that could be worn to or used at church.

    His father replies with a special tone of voice (his 'Sunday voice', which he also used for reading fairy tales): 'That is about the tragedy of human beings!'

    It landed on the wire mesh in front of me, thrust its thin, monkey-arm through the wire, seized my Sunday hat, blue satin ribbons, rosettes and all, and squealing in triumph made off with it, leaping and bounding, to the top of the monkey-tree.

    On the day of the show I decided to wear my good blue Sunday suit, even though Ms. Arnoldi had prescribed flannel shirts, boots, and jeans for all the boys.

Etymology

From Middle English Sonday, from Old English sunnandæġ, from Proto-West Germanic *Sunnōn dag (literally “day of the Sun”), equivalent to sun + day, as a calque (interpretātiō germānica) of Latin diēs Sōlis; declared the "venerable day of the sun" by Roman Emperor Constantine on March 7, 321 C.E. Compare Saterland Frisian Sundai (“Sunday”), German Low German Sünndag, Dutch zondag, West Frisian snein, German Sonntag, Danish søndag.

verb

  1. 1

    informalTo spend Sunday (at a certain place, with a certain person or people, etc.).

    I waded through accounts of new calves and colts, new fences and barns, who “Sundayed” with his brother, etc., and soon had a list of all the cases in that part of the country.

    The dogs and I were Sundaying on the garden lawn.

    2016, Brian Finnegan, “Your Sunday Best,” in totallydublin.ie, When we’re Sundaying in the city, I like nothing better than to roll out of bed and head straight for Noshington on the corner of South Circular Road and Washington Street, for one of their hugely satisfying weekend brunch options.

adverb

  1. 1

    informalOn Sunday.

Forms

plural
Sundays
past tense
Sundayed
past participle
Sundayed
present participle
Sundaying
third person singular
Sundays
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).