Meaning
A memorably happy, important or significant day; a personal or public highlight worth marking. The phrase began as a literal label for saints' days and church festivals shown in red on calendars, and the figurative sense has long since taken over. Positive and slightly literary; common in personal recollection and journalism. Regional use: General English.
Origin
It comes from rubrication, the medieval practice of writing or printing the dates of saints' days and church festivals in red ink on calendars. William Caxton described the custom in 1490 ('we wryte yet in oure kalenders the hyghe festes wyth rede lettres'), and it reached a wide public through the calendar of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, which printed holy days in red. The OED's earliest evidence for 'red letter' itself, meaning a red character, dates from before 1387 in Trevisa, while the compound noun 'red-letter day' is first recorded in 1663 in the writing of Edmund Gayton; an early American use appears in Sarah Kemble Knight's journal of 1704, where election day is called the colony's chief red-letter day. The sense has since shifted from a church festival to any memorable day.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- red letter day
- red-letter occasion
Usage Examples
- Opening day at the library she had campaigned for was a red-letter day for the whole neighborhood.
- Any visit from the grandchildren counts as a red-letter day in her calendar.
- For the physics department, the successful detection was a red-letter day twenty years in the making.