“Black Friday”: An Unfortunate Expression

As Thanksgiving approaches every year, we see and hear the commercial expression “Black Friday.”

This johnny-come-lately expression still bothers me when I hear it mentioned on the radio or see it spread across the newspaper in big letters.

It bothers me because in more traditional usage, dating at least from Roman times, “black” in front of a day of the week conveys something bad. In the United States, “black” days of the week are associated with trouble in the stock market.

Black Tuesday: October 29, 1929, the day of the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression
Black Thursday: October 24, 1929, the day of the market downturn a few days before the big crash.
Black Monday: October 19, 1987, another stock market crash.

Other countries have similar calendar expressions to commemorate terrible things:

Black July: 1983 pogrom of Tamil population in Sri Lanka in which 1,000 died.
Black September: 1970 “era of regrettable events” during which 7,000 to 8,000 people died in Jordan as a result of hostilities involving the PLO. (Wikipedia)

The commercial meaning “the Friday after Thanksgiving which determines whether or not a retailer will make a profit for the year” is actually quite recent. The earliest documentation for this meaning of Black Friday is from the 1970s.

Why “black” Friday in the sense of retail profit?

In the old days, before programs like Quicken, when people still wrote in ledgers, accountants recorded income in black ink and outgo in red ink. (Come to think of it, computer programs use black and red in the same way.) Everyone, not just retailers, wants to end the year with a balance written in black ink. To be “in the red” is to have a negative balance.

The idea that the Friday after Thanksgiving is the official start of the Christmas shopping season predates the expression.

The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924 is probably what established this idea. The film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), watched by millions in the days leading up to Christmas, annually reinforces the association of frantic department store shopping with love, Kris Kringle, and making children happy.

An interesting bit of trivia: Although a Christmas film, Miracle on 34th Streetwas released on May 2, 1947. Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck thought it wouldn’t make as much money if it were released in November or December. His publicists had to conceal the fact that it was about Christmas!

How times change. And language.

Related Articles

Let the Word Do the Work
Latin Words and Expressions: All You Need to Know
Don’t Be Vexed by Vexillology

Share

Subscribe to Receive our Articles and Exercises via Email

• You will improve your English in only 5 minutes per day, guaranteed!
• Subscribers get access to our exercise archives, writing courses, writing jobs and much more!
• You'll also get three bonus ebooks completely free!

1. curt on November 23, 2007 12:44 pm
   The Retailer’s Prayer

   Our Retailer, Who art in heaven
   Hallowed be Thy Sales;
   Thy kingdom come,
   Thy will be done,
   at the mall as it is in heaven.
   Give us this day our daily coupons,
   and forgive us our frugality,
   as we forgive those hardcore shoppers who get there
   before us; and lead us not into debt on Black Friday,
   but deliver us our online purchases before the 15th
   of December. Amen.
2. Dan on November 29, 2007 9:14 am
   In Australia, our “black” days tend to remember disastrous bushfires, like the 1967 Black Tuesday fires which killed 60 people in Tasmania, and the infamous Black Friday fires of 1939 which killed 71 people and was also the hottest day recorded in Melbourne history (45.6C, or 114.1F).

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Tasmanian_fires
3. Katie on July 16, 2008 12:33 am
   Interestingly enough, in China, the color white is synonymous with death.
4. Becca on August 16, 2008 7:37 pm
   I always assumed the term “Black Friday” was a negative term, used in reference to how insane shopping can be on that day. As someone who worked in a retail store on that infamous day more than once, I can tell you most employees use it in a negative sense, as in “Did you have to work on Black Friday?” “Yes, the crowds were horrible.”

Better Use “Redneck” with Care

A man speaking in a city board meeting in my town this week got into trouble for using the word “redneck.” He was arguing that shrinking city funds would be better spent on maintaining the local cable access channel than on Christmas lights in the town square. He stirred up a storm of protest when he referred to the city employees putting up the lights as “highly-paid rednecks.”

The uproar got me thinking about this term, one of my least favorite group designators.

As far as I can interpret the man’s remarks, he wanted to convey the thought that the cable channel, as a means of communicating the workings of the city government, is of more value than mere seasonal display. So why did he choose to call the men putting up the lights rednecks instead of, say,workers?

The mind functions in curious ways. Our thoughts reside there in layers upon layers. Sometimes what may seem like an insignificant word choice reveals a layer we may not even be aware of. The speaker came to Arkansas from California. He may not realize it himself, but his choice of the word “redneck” suggests an attitude of superiority towards the natives.

For those readers who may not be familiar with the term, redneck in modern American usage is used chiefly to refer to a perceived type of Southern white person. The term has been used in other contexts with other possible origins, but the term, as popularized by standup comic Jeff Foxworthy, probably derives from the sunburned necks of outdoor laborers. Foxworthy, a native of Georgia, can use the term with impunity, rather as black comics can get away with nigger. Depending upon who is using it, the word redneck can be inoffensive or deeply pejorative.

As used in country songs, redneck carries a connotation of pride along with the characteristics of patriotism, belief in God, self-respect, and independence. This kind of redneck probably drives a pickup truck and owns a gun. He’s not afraid of hard work and would rather go hungry than accept charity in any form. He mistrusts overeducated people and prefers the country or small town to the city.

As used by outsiders, redneck seems to have replaced “hillbilly” as a word to stereotype Southerners. As a term of opprobrium, a redneck not only drives a pickup and owns a gun, he is loud, often drunk, ignorant, bigoted, xenophobic, and trashy. He dresses like a slob, speaks with a southern accent, fills his yard with junk, and has no appreciation of the finer things of life.

The term has its uses, both in conversation and in writing, but it can be volatile and is best used with care.

You’ll find further information about redneck and other terms often applied in a pejorative sense to Southerners here (Update: page no longer online). 

A Slip Of The Lip

It’s easy to trip up when speaking or writing, but what do you call the results when you do?  A few weeks ago, I wrote about eggcorns. These are errors in which people guess wrongly the meaning, origin and spelling of certain expressions. An example would be writing or saying ‘flaw in the ointment’ instead of ‘fly in the ointment’.

Another error, made famous by Sheridan’s Mrs Malaprop, is the malapropism. If you mean to say one thing, but use a similar sounding word that means something completely different, then that’s what you’ve done. Example: A rolling stone gathers no moths. (moss)

Similar to an eggcorn, but usually taking place with songs and poems, is themondegreen. In the song The Bonny Earl of Murray, the line ‘(hae laid) him on the green’ was misconstrued as ‘Lady Mondegreen’. Other examples of mondegreens, collected by journalist Jon Carroll, include:

• Climb Every Woman (I’m Every Woman, by Chaka Khan)
• I Was Barney Rubble (I Was Born A Rebel, by Tom Petty)
• Falling on my head like a newt in motion (falling on my head like a new emotion, from Here Comes The Rain Again, Eurythmics)

Many more mondegreens are available here (Update: SFGate article no longer online).

Finally, spoonerisms result from transposing the initial sounds of words. Named after clergyman William Archibald Spooner, the resulting words usually provoke gales of laughter. Examples from Spooner himself include:

• It is now kisstomary to cuss the bride. (customary to kiss the bride)
• You have tasted two worms (wasted two terms)
• Our Lord is a shoving leopard (loving shepherd)

Many more Spoonerisms are available on Fun with Words.

Hoist With His Own Petard

I think Keith Olbermann may have had something to do with popularizing this Shakespearean expression.

In July 2005 Olbermann, writing about the London bus bombing, wrote:

July 21st may turn out to be the day the terrorists began to blow themselves up — hoist themselves, as the Middle English phrase goes, “on their own petard.”

I can’t guess why he called it a “Middle English phrase.” The expression, meaning “blown up by his own bomb,” comes from Shakespeare’s time (1605). By then, Middle English had morphed into Modern English.

As recently as Election Eve 2008, Olbermann was still using the phrase:

I’m trying to give Gov. Palin out there, a couple more seconds to figure out how she managed to get herself, as Shakespeare wrote of people destroyed by their own evil plans, “hoist with her own petard.” Keith Olbermann October 31, 2008

Here is how the expression is used in Hamlet (III, iv, 206-208):

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar, an’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon.

Hamlet is talking about his old college chums Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They’ve been spying on him for the king, and Hamlet suspects they are laying a trap for him. He’s planning his own preëmptive strike.

A “petar” was an explosive device. It got its name from the French verb pêter, which means “to break wind.” The Old French noun pet means “fart.” Shakespeare was making one of his earthy puns here.

Note that in the original expression, hoist is a verb in the past tense. Writers who want to use the expression correctly need to keep that fact in mind.

The “hoist” of current English usage retains the same meaning, “to raise, to lift up,” but in modern usage, the past tense form has been regularized to “hoisted.”
Ex. The crane hoisted the girder into place.

Commentators who don’t know their Shakespeare get it wrong:

The amusing context for this interview, was watching Keith Olbermann hoisted on his own petard. –Donklephant, March 15, 2008.

I mean who are the REAL victims here? CBS News has been hoisted on its own petard… –”Cecelia,” commenting on Dan Rather scandal, January 24, 2005.