日曜日
Meaning in EnglishSunday
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Word context
What it means
日曜日 (nichiyoubi) means Sunday. It is the named weekday in the modern seven-day calendar used in Japan and functions as a temporal noun to identify that specific day for dates, schedules, and everyday time references.
Main meanings
- 1. A common weekly day off or leisure day for many people and businesses, often associated with family time and relaxation.
- 2. The day when Christian churches commonly hold main services and related religious gatherings.
- 3. A programming marker in media and broadcasting that denotes special weekend editions or schedules.
- 4. A colloquial symbol for rest or a slower pace of life used metaphorically in speech and writing.
- 5. A frequent choice for public events, markets, and community activities because of wider availability of attendees.
How to use it
Used across formal and informal contexts—on printed calendars, digital schedules, transport timetables, workplace rotas, and in everyday conversation to arrange meetings or appointments; grammatically it behaves as a temporal noun and combines with particles and temporal expressions to indicate occurrence on Sundays or recurring Sunday events.
Variants and close terms
- 日曜 (nichiyou) — abbreviated, colloquial form commonly used in speech and casual writing.
- 休日 (kyuujitsu) — "holiday"; sometimes used when Sunday functions as a non-working day.
- 月曜日 (getsuyoubi) — Monday; often referenced as the contrasting start of the workweek.
Composition
- 日 (nichi) — "sun" or "day," the character representing the sun and daytime.
- 曜 (you) — a character used as the weekday marker derived from classical naming of celestial bodies/periods.
- 日 (bi) — the suffix "day" (same character as the first), so the compound reads as the sun + weekday marker + day to denote "Sunday."
Origin
The concept of a seven-day week and names for weekdays came to Japan through continental Asian calendrical and astrological systems and later through Western influence; the modern standardized naming, including 日曜日, became widespread after Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar and modern timekeeping practices during the Meiji period in the late 19th century.
Word class
noun (temporal noun, 名詞)