Meaning
To stop working for the rest of the day, judging that enough has been done - or that no more can usefully be done. It also serves for endings of any kind: retiring from a career, wrapping a project, or formally abandoning an effort that has run its course. Informal and warm, the standard amiable close to work or meetings; the retirement sense is a softer cousin of hang up one's boots. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The phrase is the respectable descendant of an early-nineteenth-century skiver's expression: to call it half a day meant to leave before the working day was over. Christine Ammer records that the original phrase was call it half a day, first recorded in 1838 - J. C. Neal's Charcoal Sketches of that year has 'I've a great mind to knock off and call it half a day' - and Wiktionary dates the form to around 1834. The full-day version is first recorded in 1919, when the partial day's excuse had hardened into the workday's epitaph, and call it a night followed in 1938 for evening pursuits. P. G. Wodehouse deployed it in Jeeves in the Offing (1960) - the time has come to call it a day when one is outstaying one's welcome - and Collins adds the retirement sense: someone calls it a day and finally retires. McGraw-Hill and Farlex keep the plain stopping-work sense current.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- call it a night
- call it half a day
- let's call it a day
Usage Examples
- The scaffold was up and the third coat was drying, so the painters called it a day at four.
- After forty years behind the bar, Mick called it a day and handed the keys to his daughter.
- Let's call it a day on the budget line - nobody's numbers will survive tomorrow's meeting anyway.