"Gray Thursday" (Thanksgiving Day as shopping day)

[Ben Zimmer]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake
<b.taylorblake at gmail.com> wrote:

> By the way, I know several of you (most notably John Baker and Barry
> Popik) have also been interested in the origins of "Black Friday."  I
> was pleased to see that *Business Week*, relying on Ben Zimmer's
> excellent review last year of then-available "Black Friday" data, has
> now joined others in accepting the term's true origins, even going as
> far as explaining how retailers and PR folks worked to spin "Black
> Friday" into something positive.
>
> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-20/the-branding-of-black-friday
>
> With that, I think our work is done.

Doing my part to get the word out:

http://radioboston.wbur.org/2012/11/22/black-friday

(The interview was also an opportunity to talk about the Hornism
"etymythology.")

This piece also links to my Word Routes column:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/black-friday-a-history-of-violence.html

And Mark Liberman posted about the early trajectory of the expression
on Language Log today:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4335

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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