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Glite Dictionary
April Fools' Day

April Fools' Day

3 2.0
A day on the first of April when people play jokes on others
  • noun
  • /ˈeɪprɪl fuːlz deɪ/
translation icon : Día de los Inocentes
  • She announced she was quitting her job on April Fools' Day, but it turned out to be a joke.
  • April Fools' Day prank

Examples

  • On April Fools' Day, many people play practical jokes on their friends and family.

  • Many people play pranks on April Fools' Day.

  • Every year, our office organizes harmless pranks for April Fools' Day.

  • I nearly believed his wild story until I remembered it was April Fools' Day.

  • Newspapers sometimes publish fake stories on April Fools' Day to trick their readers.

  • Don't believe anything on April Fools' Day!

  • Every year on April Fools' Day, I try to trick my coworkers with a funny prank.

Synonyms

April Fools'
vsApril Fools' Day
7 2.6

A day on April 1 when people play jokes and trick others

is celebrated across many countries with practical jokes rather than hoaxes
All Fools' day
vsApril Fools' Day
2 3.1

A day on the first of April when people play jokes on others

is the exact same celebration but expressed with a different name

Surface Forms

April Fools' Day singular
April Fools' Days plural

Morphology

April + Fools' + day

The phrase is directly compositional: 'April' (the month) + 'Fools'' (people acting foolishly) + 'day' (a named day), which signals a day in April associated with fools — i.e., people behaving foolishly or playing tricks. This construction is transparent and cross-linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will very likely infer the holiday's general meaning.

Etymology

April Fools' Day may come from a time when New Year was celebrated at the end of March, so people who kept the old April date were laughed at as fools. That's why the day became a time for jokes and tricks, and people call each other 'April fools'.