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Hump Day

Posted by ESC on February 10, 2008 at 13:28:

In Reply to: Hump Day posted by Gary Martin on February 10, 2008 at 13:27:

: : Type your question here: I believe that I invented the phrase "hump day" 34 years ago when I was living in Berkeley, CA. I was walking with my boyfriend at the time David Scott Johnson and told him that I like to think of Wednesday as hump day because you are over the hump and it's all down-hill until the end of the week.

: : He later moved to Park Forest, IL and I to Florida but over the years I keep hearing this expression more and more. Now it is quite possible that someone else had the same idea (lot's of folks in the world) but I had never heard of it before and it pretty much just came to me in that moment.

: : This is my honest belief and I am really entertained that this has spread so widely. I did read a post in this blog that referred to earlier origins of this, but I suspect that this was not used until around 1973 or 1974 when I thought it up. Anyway, it does entertain me to think so!

: Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. Here's a piece that was printed in The Long Beach Press Telegram, 27th February 1959:

: The high light of any patrol... is Hump Day... 'That's the day the patrol is half over, when the rest of the way is downhill.'

: There are numerous other citations in US newspapers well before 1973.

: Had you been able to prove a coinage you might now be coining it - Durex claim copyright of the term.

: I'd never heard 'hump day' here in the UK before your post, so you can without any fear of contradiction say that you introduced it to a small part of Sheffield.

It sounds like you had an original idea. But someone else had it first. I can remember a song that had the line "I've gotta get over the hump." Couldn't find the words online.

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