Meaning & use
dress down day
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Meaning
nouncountableinformal
A day at an office or school when people may wear casual clothes instead of formal business wear or uniforms.
Grammar: Takes an or the: we have a dress down day; also written dress-down day.
Patterns
- a dress down day at work
- on dress down day
On Friday we have a dress down day, so I wear jeans to the office.
The school held a dress down day to raise money for charity.
Even on a dress down day, the manager wore a collared shirt.
Word forms
| plural | dress down days |
|---|
Common combinations
- have a dress down day
- The company has a dress down day every month.
- dress down Friday
- Many offices run a dress down Friday.
- charity dress down day
- The charity dress down day raised two hundred dollars.
- on dress down day
- On dress down day I wore sneakers.
- hold a dress down day
- The school will hold a dress down day next week.
Synonyms and how they differ
- casual day
- Casual day is a shorter everyday name and means the same thing.
- casual Friday
- Casual Friday is tied to one weekday, while a dress down day can fall on any day.
- mufti day
- Mufti day is the British and Commonwealth term, often for schools that wear uniform.
Opposites
Word family
- dress down verb
- to wear less formal clothes
- dress-down adjective
- casual, as in a dress-down policy
- dress code noun
- rules about what to wear
Commonly confused: dress down day or dress down (scold)?
dress down day vs dress down (scold)
To dress someone down means to scold them harshly, which is unrelated to a dress down day.
Practice
Why might an employee wear jeans on a dress down day?
Choose one answer.
A dress down day relaxes the dress code so casual clothes are permitted. A stricter code or a formal ceremony would mean the opposite.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dress down day”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.