Halloween

//ˌhæ.ləˈwiːn// name

name ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    the evening before All Saints' Day; often devoted to pranks played by young people wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    The eve of All Hallows' Day; October 31st; celebrated (mostly in English-speaking countries) by children going door-to-door in costume and soliciting candy with menaces.

    "They all get dressed up in scary costumes at Halloween."

Synonyms

All synonyms
adventall hallows' eveall saints dayallhallows eveanniversaryash wednesday

Example

More examples

"Wishing you a Halloween filled with fun."

Etymology

A Scottish shortening of Allhalloweven, from Allhallowmas (the obsolete earlier name of All Saints' Day) + even (an archaic or poetic variant of eve; see also een). For the American pronunciation with /ɑ/, compare the Southern English traditional dialect pronunciations fallow /ˈfɒ.lə/ and tallow /ˈtɒ.lə/.

Related phrases

Halloween crabanti-Halloweenall hallows daydoor to doorjack o lanterntrick or treatunited kingdomunited states

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.