Saint Valentine's Day
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1.4
- noun
- /seɪnt ˈvælənˌtaɪnz deɪ/
- Many people celebrate Saint Valentine's Day by going out for a romantic dinner with their partner.
Examples
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On Saint Valentine's Day, couples often exchange gifts and love letters to show their affection.
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Happy Saint Valentine's Day.
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Happy Saint Valentine's Day, Irma.
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But who'll be the last lover standing Come Saint Valentine's Day
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Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day All in the morning betime And I a maid At your window To be your Valentine -
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Happy Saint Valentine's Day!
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Come Saint Valentine's Day
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On Saint Valentine's Day
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Ekiben may be presented as a gift at any time; some women now even give them to their male acquaintances on Saint Valentine's Day.
Academic text (1994) -
Saint Valentine's Day.
Fiction book (1994)
Synonyms
212
1.0
A day on February 14 when people show love with cards, gifts, or flowers
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1.8
A day on February 14 when people give cards and flowers to loved ones
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1.0
A day each year when people celebrate love and give cards or gifts
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally names a calendar observance for a person ('Saint Valentine'), so a learner who knows 'saint' and 'day' can infer it is a day dedicated to someone called Valentine. However, the specific cultural meaning—celebrating romantic love with cards and gifts—is not predictable from the constituents alone, so knowledge of the tradition is required; cross‑linguistic equivalents make the concept somewhat recognizable but not fully compositional.
Etymology
Saint Valentine's Day may come from a story about a priest called Saint Valentine who secretly married young lovers when leaders would not let them and who wrote letters signed 'Your Valentine'. So today Saint Valentine's Day is a day for showing love with cards and small gifts.