everyday - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English everidayes, every daies, every dayes (“everyday, daily, continual, constant”, adjective, literally “every day's”), equivalent to every +‎ day.

everyday (not comparable)

  1. Appropriate for ordinary use, rather than for special occasions.
    Synonym: workaday
  2. Commonplace, ordinary.
    Synonyms: mundane, quotidian, routine, typical, unremarkable; see also Thesaurus:common, Thesaurus:normal
    • 2003, Robert Pack, Belief and Uncertainty in the Poetry of Robert Frost (Middlebury College press)‎[1], UPNE, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 110:
      Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
      Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why,
      But I went near to see with my own eyes.
      You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
      Of the fresh earth from your own baby's grave
      And talk about your everyday concerns. […]
    • 2010, Malcolm Knox, The Monthly, April 2010, Issue 55, The Monthly Ptd Ltd, page 42:
      Although it is an everyday virus, there is something about influenza that inspires awe.
    • 2025 June 14, Christopher Mathias, “JD Vance threatened to deport him. The ‘menswear guy’ is posting through it”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN, archived from the original on 1 July 2025:
      By 2025, of course, Trump and Miller were back in the White House, pursuing a campaign promise to “remigrate” millions of everyday people out of America.
  3. (literally) Present or recurring every day.
    Synonyms: circadian, daily, quotidian; see also Thesaurus:daily
    Coordinate term: (rare) everyweek
    • [1987], “Timer Recording”, in Operating Instructions: Video Cassette Recorder, NV-G25 Series, Central Osaka: Matsushita Electric Trading Co., Ltd., page 21:
      For Everyday Recording / For example: Programme time for timer recording every day from 20:00–22:45 on timer programme number 7. Programming for everyday recording can be made on any of the timer programme numbers 1–7. […] For Everyweek Recording / For Example: Programming a timer recording for a TV programme that is broadcast every week on Sunday, from 20:00 to 22:45.
    • 1993, Katherine Hall Page, The Body in the Cast (The Beeler Large Print Mystery Series), Hampton Falls, N.H.: Beeler Large Print, published 1999, →ISBN, page 207:
      “What kind of place do you live in! Every time we turn around, somebody else is getting killed!” / “Believe me, it’s not an everyday occurrence.” An everyweek occurrence lately, however.
    • 1994 November 9, T[homas] R[oy] Reid, “Some Japanese Kiss in Public; Their Elders Are Shocked . . . Shocked!”, in The Philadelphia Inquirer; reprinted in Mark Hutter, “[Mate Selection] Mate Selection in Feudal and Contemporary Japan”, in The Changing Family, 3rd edition, Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn & Bacon, 1998, →ISBN, page 268, column 1:
      It’s not an everyday, or even an everyweek, event, but nowadays you can sometimes see young couples kissing goodbye at street corners and train stations.
  4. (rare) Commonplace or ordinary during daytime.
    Coordinate term: everynight
    • 1931, Jack While, Fifty Years of Fire Fighting in London, London: Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), Ltd., page 18:
      This was an everyday and everynight scene a couple of decades ago.
    • 1992, Patricia Connelly, Pat Armstrong, editors, Feminism in Action: Studies in Political Economy, Toronto, Ont.: Canadian Scholars’ Press, →ISBN, pages 16–17:
      It calls for methods of thinking, of writing texts, and of investigation that expand and extend our knowledge of how our everyday/everynight worlds are put together, determined and shaped as they are by forces and powers beyond our practical and direct knowledge.
    • 1997, Celeste Fraser Delgado, José Esteban Muñoz, “Rebellions of Everynight Life”, in Celeste Fraser Delgado, José Esteban Muñoz, editors, Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America, Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 20:
      The locus of emancipatory hopes shifts from everyday to everynight life.

appropriate for ordinary use, rather than for special occasions

commonplace, ordinary

everyday

  1. Misspelling of every day (compare everywhere, everyway, etc.).

When describing the frequency of an action denoted by a verb, it is considered correct to separate the individual words: every hour, every day, every week, etc.

Influenza is considered an everyday virus because it infects people every day.

everyday (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) Literally every day in succession, or every day but Sunday. [14th–19th c.]
  2. (rare) The ordinary or routine day or occasion.
    Putting away the tableware for everyday, a chore which is part of the everyday.

ordinary or routine day or occasion