Halloween
Americannoun
noun
Usage
What is Halloween? Halloween is a holiday on October 31 that’s essentially a celebration of spooky and scary stuff, like ghosts, witches, monsters, and haunted houses.It’s traditionally celebrated by dressing in costumes, decorating with things like jack-o’-lanterns (carved pumpkins) and fake spiderwebs, and trick or treating—going door to door to collect candy or other treats from people who are giving it out. The trick part of trick or treat is a reference to the pranks that kids sometimes play on Halloween.Halloween is especially celebrated by children, but teens and adults commonly celebrate it, too, such as by having parties (often costume parties), watching scary movies, giving out candy to kids, eating some of that candy, and then eating some of the candy that kids bring home.Halloween is a secular (nonreligious) holiday, but its name has roots in the Christian holiday Allhallows, better known as All Saints’ Day. Another name for Halloween is Allhallows Eve (the night before Allhallows).Halloween is commonly used as a modifier in phrases like Halloween costume, Halloween party, Halloween candy, and Halloween night.Example: Don’t give me this trunk or treat stuff—I want a classic Halloween, with trick or treating and haunted houses and my neighbor disguising himself as a stuffed scarecrow so he can pop up and scare kids when they try to take more than one piece of candy from the bowl.
Etymology
Origin of Halloween
First recorded in 1550–60; (All)hallow(s) + e(v)en 2
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
One early party he planned—a Halloween rave at a defunct plastics plant that was a registered toxic-waste site—was shut down by the fire department after it deemed the place unsafe.
The majority of the company’s doughnuts are purchased for sharing, typically two to three times per year, often around holidays or events such as Valentine’s Day and Halloween.
“For example, we just watched the Halloween episode a couple of months ago and they now understood that October is a month within the year.”
From Los Angeles Times
The infamous air-con unit was later used as an idea for Halloween outfit.
From BBC
Once the film became a hit, Netflix was fielding non-stop calls from would-be licensees eager to get products on shelves for Halloween and the holidays.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
