What does ferial mean?
Ferial is a formal adjective meaning 'of or relating to an ordinary weekday', most often encountered in church contexts. In the liturgical calendars of Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, days are graded according to their importance, and those carrying no feast are called ferial days — plain, unadorned days on which services follow the simplest form, sometimes called the ferial office. By extension, the word can describe anything everyday or lacking festive character. It derives from the Latin feria, which originally meant a day of rest or festival and came to denote ordinary weekdays; the same root gave Spanish fiesta via related Romance forms. Ferial is rare outside specialist religious writing, so using it correctly signals familiarity with liturgical vocabulary, while mistaking it for the unrelated word 'feral' — describing wild animals — is a common error among readers encountering it for the first time.
adjectiveOf or relating to a feria, i.e. an ordinary weekday, especially in ecclesiastical use where it designates a day on which no feast falls.
- Relating to an ordinary weekday on which no religious feast is observed (ecclesiastical).
- More generally, characteristic of or suitable for an ordinary working day; lacking festive character.
"The choir sang the ferial psalmody, unadorned by any festive antiphons."
"Because Christmas fell on a Monday, the following days were all ferial."
"The monastery's ferial routine was quieter than its feast-day celebrations."
In church tradition, even time itself has ranks — and 'ferial' marks the humble weekdays that sit between the great feasts.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of ferial
Ferial comes from the Latin adjective ferialis, formed from feria, meaning a holiday or festival day, which in turn derives from feriae, the Roman term for religious holidays. In medieval Church usage the meaning shifted: since every day was in some sense holy, feria came to designate an ordinary weekday on which no feast fell, and English adopted ferial in this sense around the early seventeenth century. Its Latin root also underlies Spanish fiesta and the borrowed English noun feria.
How ferial is actually used
A formal term used almost exclusively in liturgical contexts, such as Roman Catholic and Anglican calendars, where days are classified as feasts, fasts, or ferial days. Outside these circles it is rare and may sound obscure or antiquarian.
Easily confused with ferial
Feral describes animals gone wild after escape from domestication, while ferial simply means ordinary or relating to weekdays.