Term-time is the part of the year when school is actually running — lessons on, students in the building — as opposed to the holidays in between. British schools and universities cut the year into terms (often three: autumn, spring, summer), so term-time is all of those terms taken together, seen from outside. You use it mostly to say what may or may not happen during it: "You can't take a child out of school in term-time", "She works part-time in term-time and full-time in the summer", "term-time accommodation". That last one shows the adjective use, which is very common — a term-time job, a term-time address, term-time only hours, meaning work that stops when the school stops, which is how many school kitchen and office staff are employed. This is a British and Commonwealth word. American schools talk about **the school year**, **during the school year**, or **the semester**, and an American reader may pause at term-time. Written with a hyphen most often, sometimes as two words or one; all are seen.