heyday
pronunciation
How to pronounce heyday in British English:
UK [ˈheɪdeɪ]
How to pronounce heyday in American English:
US [ˈheɪdeɪ]
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- Noun:
- the period of greatest prosperity or productivity
Word Origin
- heyday
- heyday: [16] Etymologically, the -day of heyday has no connection with the English noun day, although it has come to resemble it over the centuries. Nor is hey- related to hay. Originally the word was heyda, an exclamation roughly equivalent to modern English hurrah. Probably it was just an extension of hey, modelled partly on Low German heida ‘hurrah’. Its earliest noun use (first recorded in the 1590s) was in the sense ‘state of exultation’; the influence of the day-like second syllable did not make itself felt until the mid-18th century, when the modern sense ‘period of greatest success’ began to emerge.
- heyday (n.)
- late 16c., alteration of heyda (1520s), exclamation of playfulness or surprise, something like Modern English hurrah, apparently an extended form of Middle English interjection hey or hei (see hey). Modern sense of "stage of greatest vigor" first recorded 1751, which altered the spelling on model of day, with which this word apparently has no etymological connection.
Example
- 1. The era of good feelings associated with the heyday of globalisation has gone for ever .
- 2. Turns out that in the heyday of railroading all over the nation , crews used to spread salt in the wintertime .
- 3. In its heyday timbuktu was a hub of learning that grew rich on duties from the trans-saharan trade in gold , ivory , salt and slaves .
- 4. Wales supplied the world with iron in its 19th-century heyday , when the industry was built upon an abundant local supply of ores , coal , timber and limestone .
- 5. Such talk is reminiscent of japan 's economic heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s , when sony snapped up columbia studios .