The days a place does not normally work — not everywhere Saturday and Sunday.
Weekend is the everyday name for a jurisdiction's rest days. It carries no legal definition of its own: where the law speaks, it speaks of a weekly rest period, and the weekend is whatever days that period lands on.
The word misleads because it sounds descriptive. "End of the week" implies Saturday and Sunday, and for most of the world it is. It is not for much of the Gulf, where the week ends on Thursday, nor for Israel, nor for three states of Malaysia. A system that treats the word as a synonym for Saturday and Sunday has hardcoded one region's custom as a global fact.
Use rest day when precision matters. Weekend is fine in prose and dangerous in code.
| Jurisdiction | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Most of the world | Saturday and Sunday. |
| SA, and much of the Gulf | Friday and Saturday. Sunday opens the week. |
| MY | Saturday and Sunday nationally; Friday and Saturday in Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu. |
Rest day is the thing itself and is what the law fixes. Weekend is the colloquial name for wherever those days fall.
A weekend recurs every week. A public holiday happens once a year and can land on a weekend, which is what substitution rules exist to handle.
See also rest day · working day · non working day · substitution
We hold evidenced rest days for 2 jurisdictions of 241 and decline to assume for the rest, because a wrong week looks exactly like a right one. See what we hold.