Black Friday

[ blak-frahy-dey, -dee ]

noun
  1. September 24, 1869, the date of a financial panic sparked by gold speculators.

  2. the day after Thanksgiving, one of the busiest shopping days because of discounts offered by retailers: I sign up for promotional emails at my favorite stores before Black Friday so I don’t miss any exceptional bargains.: Compare Cyber Monday, Green Monday.

Origin of Black Friday

1
First recorded in 1865–70; from black in the sense “marked by disaster or misfortune”; the 1951 sense “day after Thanksgiving” originally so called from the troublesome traffic caused by shoppers and later re-explained with reference to the use of black ink to record business profits

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

Other Idioms and Phrases with Black Friday

Black Friday

Also Black Monday, Black Tuesday, etc. A day of economic catastrophe, as in We feared there'd be another Black Friday. This usage dates from September 24, 1869, a Friday when stock manipulators Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to corner the gold market and caused its collapse. The adjective black has been appended to similar occasions ever since, including October 29, 1929, the Tuesday of the market collapse that marked the start of the Great Depression, and Black Monday of October 19, 1987, when the stock market experienced its greatest fall since the Great Depression.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.