A long weekend is a term used in Western countries, paticularly in North America, to denote a weekend that is at least three days long (a three-day weekend), due to a holiday falling on either the Friday or Monday.
In rare cases there may also be a four-day weekend in which both Friday and Monday are holidays. This occurs once a year in the Easter weekend, with Easter Monday and Good Friday. Additionally, in places where a holiday occurs on a Tuesday or a Thursday (such as Thanksgiving in the United States), the gap between that day and the weekend is often also designated as a holiday, or set to be a movable or floating holiday .
Other cultures
The term for a four-day weekend in Spanish-speaking countries is puente ("bridge").
In Spain, the "bridge" becomes an "aqueduct" in some years when the anniversary of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 (6 December) and the Blessed Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception (8 December) and a weekend plus a movable holiday form a block of five days.
French-speaking cultures use the same "bridge" idiom: faire le pont meaning "to take a long weekend".
In German, a bridge-related term is also used: a holiday taken to fill the gap between a holiday Thursday or Tuesday and the weekend is called a Brückentag ("bridge day").
