banyan day
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
According to the OED, the term is borrowed from the Banyans in the East Indies, a caste that ate nothing that had life.
Noun[edit]
banyan day (plural banyan days)
- (dated, UK, nautical, idiomatic) In British naval tradition, a day of the week when galley kitchens served no meat on board ship.
- 1819, James Hardy Vaux, Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux, Chapter XVIII, p. 204-205:
- This was a favourable circumstance in one respect to myself and the ship's company, for as Tuesday is a sumptuous day in point of allowance in the navy, beef and pudding being the prescribed fare for dinner, we by this accident feasted two days together; whereas had it occurred on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, two successive banyan (or starvation) days would have been our dismal portion.
- (UK, nautical, idiomatic) A picnic or cookout for the ship's crew.
Alternative forms[edit]
- Banian day, banian day, banian-day[1]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ 1989, Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen-Gun Salute, →ISBN, page 27:
- Then again following the sea was what they were used to, and they liked what they were used to, a regular life with no changes of any kind, no mad interference with the steady succession of salt pork on Sunday and Thursday, salt beef on Tuesday and Saturday, with banian-days between; the sea itself could be relied upon to provide all the variety that could possibly be desired.
- [Francis] Grose [et al.] (1811) “Banyan day”, in Lexicon Balatronicum. A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. […], London: […] C. Chappell, […], →OCLC.