English Explanatory Dictionary

Halloween

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. The eve of All Hallows' Day; October 31st; celebrated (mostly in English-speaking countries) by children going door-to-door in costume and soliciting candy with menaces.

Pronunciation

/ˌha.ləˈwiːn/ /ˌha.ləʊˈiːn/ /ˌhæ.ləˈwiːn/ /ˌhɑ.ləˈwiːn/ /ˌhæ.loʊˈiːn/ En-us-Halloween.ogg /halo.win/

Word forms

Halloween Halloweens Hallowe'en Halloweven

Etymology

From a Scots shortening of Allhalloweven, from Allhallowmas (the obsolete earlier name of All Saints' Day) + even (an archaic or poetic variant of eve; see also een). For the American pronunciation with /ɑ/, compare the Southern English traditional dialect pronunciations fallow /ˈfɒ.lə/ and tallow /ˈtɒ.lə/.

Related words

All Hallows' Day Reformation Sunday Samhain trick-or-treat trick or treat

Derived words

anti-Halloween Halloweekend Halloween crab Slutoween Summerween
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on H Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary