[f. FAST sb.1 + DAY; cf. fasten-day s.v. FASTEN sb.] A day to be observed as a fast.
In some New England States spec. the day appointed every spring by the governor for fasting. Sacramental fast-day (Scotland): a fast observed on one day in the week preceding the yearly or half-yearly Communion Sunday; until about 1886 business was generally suspended on these days as on Sundays.
c. 1340. Cursor Mundi, 27210 (Fairf.). In halitide or fast-day.
1643. in Clarendon, Hist. Reb. (1704), II. 289. Stir them up, the next Fast-day to the chearful taking of it.
1724. R. Falconer, Voy. (1769), 232. The next Morning early was design’d for their Enterprize, being it was some Fast-day with them, that they usually at four o’Clock in the Morning rise, and wash themselves all over, and pray to their Prophet for some Time; and this being to be done below, they thought then would be the right Time.
1841. Trench, Parables, xxix. (1864), 479. Moses appointed but one fast-day in the year, the great day of atonement (Lev. xxvi. 29; Num. xxix. 7); but the devouter Jews, both those who were, and those who would seem such, the Pharisees above all, kept two fasts weekly.
attrib. 1866. Lowell, Commencement Dinner, Poems, 1890, IV. 256.
| And as near to the present occasions of men | |
| As a Fast Day discourse of the year eighteen ten. |
