black Friday

[Laurence Horn]

And yet ignorance marches blithely on.  Just checked the weather at accuweather.com and learned the following from a blurb on the site:

Holiday Shopping
•The term "Black Friday" doesn't come from the dark cloud of shoppers. It got its name from retailers' balance sheets. The day's profit supposedly moves retailers from red to black.

--contributing two etymythologies for the price of one.

LH


On Nov 24, 2012, at 12:27 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>>
>> Here's a link to a proposed etymology for "black Friday," via Andrew
>> Sullivan's The Dish.
>
> This link, I take it:
>
> http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/black-fridays-rebranding.html
>
> Sullivan links to The Week, which in turn links to a Marketplace piece
> from last year that relied on (but did not cite) my Word Routes column
> on Bonnie's research. Bonnie did leave a comment on the Marketplace
> page, though:
>
> http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/commentary/history-black-friday
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org