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Bad Hair Day

Posted by Marian on January 19, 2002 at

In Reply to: Bad Hair Day posted by ESC on January 19, 2002

: : : The term 'bad hair day' did in fact originate in the UK in 1991 uttered from the lips of Dr Alexandra Bartys, a much inspired and creative soul at the age of 17 years. Her utterances of having a bad hair day were recorded at school having woken up late and burnt the toast and then realised she could do nothing with her hair.

: : Oh, come on now. I now I heard this in the early 70s, if not before.

: BAD HAIR DAY -- n. a day on which one's hair is particularly unmanageable; hence, a day on which everything seems to go wrong. Colloquial, originally US. 1994 Post (Denver): Soon you will notice how much less complaining you do, even on bad hair days. From 20th Century Words: The Story of New Words in English Over the Last 100 Years by John Ayto (Oxford University Press, New York, 1999).

I found the html version of by googling "bad hair day." It's a MS Word 2000 document listing the title of "Snoopy" cartoon strips which were created by Charles M. Schultz over most of the second half of the 20th century. The title listed for the November 23, 1962 strip is "Violet's Bad Hair Day."

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