Idiom
banyan day
Meaning
In British naval tradition, a day of the week when galley kitchens served no meat on board ship.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“The ship crew eats only vegetables on a banyan day.”
“Because the ship ran low on supplies, the captain declared that Friday would be a banyan day.”
“The sailors grumbled about the lack of meat, yet they accepted the tradition of the banyan day as a necessary measure for rationing.”
Examples
simple
“The ship crew eats only vegetables on a banyan day.”
contextual
“Because the ship ran low on supplies, the captain declared that Friday would be a banyan day.”
complex
“The sailors grumbled about the lack of meat, yet they accepted the tradition of the banyan day as a necessary measure for rationing.”
Origin
According to the OED, the term is borrowed from the Banyans in the East Indies, a caste that ate nothing that had life.
Key words
Related idioms
- Updated