weekday

American  

[week-dey] / ˈwikˌdeɪ /

noun

• weekdays
  plural

1. any day of the week except Sunday or, often, Saturday and Sunday.

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adjective

1. of or on a weekday.

   weekday occupations.

weekday British  

/ ˈwiːkˌdeɪ /

noun

1. any day of the week other than Sunday and, often, Saturday

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Usage

What is a weekday? A weekday is any day that is not a weekend day. Since the weekend is considered to consist of Saturday and Sunday, the weekdays are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Even though Friday evening is sometimes considered the start of the weekend, Friday is still considered a weekday.)The evenings of weekdays are called weeknights. The word week most commonly refers to any period of seven consecutive days, or to the seven-day period on the calendar that begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. However, in weekday and weeknight, it refers to the five-day period that’s often considered the workweek or school week. The standard workweek is from Monday through Friday, though working schedules vary widely. Days of the workweek can be called workdays. Weekdays are usually (but not always) workdays or school days. For this reason, terms like weekday and weeknight are typically used—instead of just saying day or night—to distinguish them from the days and nights on the weekend. The word weekdays can be used as an adverb meaning on weekdays—Monday through Friday. The word weekends can be used as an adverb in the same way, as in We’re open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but we’re closed weekends. Example: I don’t usually like to be out so late on a weekday, but I couldn’t miss this!

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• weekdays
  plural

Etymology

Origin of weekday

before 900; Middle English; Old English wicdæg. See week, day

Explanation

If it's not Saturday or Sunday, today is a weekday. Better get to bed early tonight — tomorrow's another weekday and you've got school! You can categorize every day of the week as either a weekday or the weekend. Monday through Friday are weekdays, which for most people means work or school. The word weekday can also be used as an adjective, to describe something that happens on one of these days, like your weekday routine or the weekday traffic on your commute. This word stems from the Old English wicudæge, and it originally meant "any day but Sunday."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

weekday weekdays

It has also pledged to raise the German flag every weekday at public schools and better preserve war memorials to German soldiers.

From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026

In the basement of St. Boniface Church in Anaheim on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings in the mid-1990s, my sister, about 20 other teenagers and I learned about the tenets of our faith.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026

On a recent weekday, about two dozen foreign attendees worked on laptops in the Network School’s cafe, which sold health supplements including creatine and collagen peptides.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 1, 2026

Even relatively small differences between weekday and weekend schedules may create what researchers often call social jet lag.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 31, 2026

To me it always felt like home and weekday evenings.

From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan

Notifications would be silenced during school hours, defined as 8:00 am to 3:00 pm on weekdays between August 15 and June 15.

From Barron's ● Aug. 26, 2026

Listen to Matt Chorley live from Westminster, weekdays from 14:00 on BBC Radio 5 Live.

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026

Come between 2 and 5 p.m. on weekdays for the happy hour, when half-shells go for $1.50 a pop.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026

Videos for their vast social media following are filmed at weekends, so that weekdays are largely kept free for school, Kavuma says.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

There’d been no electricity, not even on weekdays, since the snowstorm.

From "The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer