Day of the week/weekday - First day of the week - End of the week/weekend

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A number of English expressions involving the word week can be a source of misunderstanding, especially for non-native speakers.

Day of the week – weekday

The expressions day of the week and weekday do not have the same meaning. While there are seven days of the week, namely, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, there are only five or perhaps six weekdays. Sunday and, in the view of many, Saturday are not weekdays. A weekday is a workday or day of the working week.

The distinction between day of the week and weekday is clearer in the Romance languages: weekday in French is jour ouvrable, in Spanish día lavorable, and in Italian giorno lavorativo or giorno feriale, all of which make it clear that Sunday, though a day of the week, is not a weekday. German, like English, has both Tag der Woche and Wochentag, but, unlike English, does not distinguish between them, and so every Tag der Woche is also a Wochentag (though AWE is reliably informed Tag der Woche is not much used): weekday in German is Werktag.

First day of the week

Until the final decades of the twentieth century it was generally accepted in the UK that the first day of the week is Sunday - a reflection of Judeo- Christian belief (see, e.g., Genesis 2, 1-3, Exodus 20, 8-11, and Matthew 28, 1). In recent years, however, Monday has come to replace Sunday as the first day of the week – the result perhaps of a decline in religious belief but also of international practice: since the 1988 declaration of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO 8601) Monday has been the internationally recognised first day of the week. Currently in the UK there is no consensus on this issue, and while, e.g., many diaries and calendars assume in their pagination that the week begins on Monday, others still treat Sunday as the first day of the week.

End of the week – weekend

The expressions end of the week and week end are not interchangeable. The end of the week means the conclusion of the week, i.e., the end of the last day of the week (whether this is taken to be Saturday or Sunday – see above). So if I have promised to give you the money before the end of the week and I give it to you very late on Sunday evening, I have (just) kept my promise. The weekend is Saturday and Sunday taken together: So ‘Let’s meet some time at (or over) the weekend‘ means ‘Let’s meet some time on Saturday or Sunday‘ and ‘He visits his parents at the weekend‘ means ‘He visits his parents on Saturday and /or Sunday‘. The weekend is often contrasted with the days of the working week, i.e., weekdays.