Learn English – Why it is called ‘Black Friday’

etymologyphrase-meaning

In the Western countries like USA and Canada, there is a shopping fest(festival) called Black Friday, I wonder why the word 'black' is added to it?

I think the 'word' black denotes some negativity or darkness. Why not call that Friday a Green or Yellow Friday because everybody is happy, everybody wins!

Best Answer

Black Friday was either first used in November 1951 to describe factory workers taking sick days, or in 1966 in Philadelphia to describe the rush of people coming into the city for Army/Navy football games.

The term 'black' for a bad market day was already established by sometime in the late 19th century, and the US had a historic 'Black Monday' and 'Black Tuesday' in 1929 which have been recognized as the start of the Great Depression, where the Dow Jones lost almost 25% of it's value over the course of both days. There was likely *a* Black Friday before then, but the term as used today seems to have originated in one of the following places:

  1. According to the an article in The Atlantic, the first modern(ish) use of the term was in an article of Factory Management and Maintenance in 1951, where it was associated with the widespread 'sickness' that seemed to befall factory workers the day after Thanksgiving. Already known as a big shopping day, it was recommended that factory management offer the day as an extra holiday as a 'bargaining chip' with unions, since the day was already one of relatively little production. The author used the term again in a February 1952 issue when mentioning that one company did indeed add 'Black Friday' to their list of paid holidays.

  2. Other Sources say Black Friday became widespread in Philadelphia as a term by police officers describing the awful traffic, crowds, and behavior of tens of thousands of people showing up for the annual Army-Navy game in the '60s and shopping while they were there and off work. It appears to have been in normal use by the police department as early as 1961 (along with "Black Saturday"). The term became used widely for the day after Thanksgiving, to the dismay of retailers who disliked the negative connotations. A couple of decades later, after some not-so-successful campaigning to change it to 'Big Friday', retailers finally accepted the name, and changed the meaning of 'black' to be the day that they went from 'in the red' to 'in the black', because of the revenue earned that particular day.

Clearly, the name did begin with plenty of negative intent. It has since been co-opted by clever marketers and, since the origin was forgotten, has lost the negative slant.

Snopes has a great rundown that lists the key quotes from several sources, if you're interested.

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