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In its earliest appearances in English, in the 16th century, heyday was used as an interjection that expressed elation or wonder (similar to our word hey, from which it derives). Within a few decades, heyday was seeing use as a noun meaning "high spirits." This sense can be seen in Act III, scene 4 of Hamlet, when the Prince of Denmark tells his mother, "You cannot call it love; for at your age / The heyday in the blood is tame…." The word's second syllable is not thought to be borne of the modern word day (or any of its ancestors), but in the 18th century the syllable's resemblance to that word likely influenced the development of the now-familiar use referring to the period when one's achievement or popularity has reached its zenith.
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Examples of heyday in a Sentence
Ars Technica, 9 Jan. 2025
Darts finals have been won more handsomely — the sport’s all-time great Phil Taylor dished out three 7-0 whitewashes in his heyday — but not like this.
—Tim Spiers, The Athletic, 4 Jan. 2025
That was the decade of his heyday, when the larger-than-life New York mogul’s worldview on trade, economics, geopolitics and culture seemed to solidify.
—William Pesek, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2025
The 77-year-old looks back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the 1960s and ‘70s as being the heyday of influence — citing the impact of the five-year Fulbright hearings scrutinizing the Vietnam War.
—Laura Kelly, The Hill, 25 Dec. 2024
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“Heyday.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heyday. Accessed 20 Jan. 2025.
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