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Things that go bump in the nightMeaningFrightening but imagined supernatural events. OriginThe earliest known example of the phrase in print is in the 1918 in the Bulletin of the School Oriental and African Studies:
That usage suggests that the author expected his readers to be familiar with the phrase. Around the same time the phrase was incorporated into a prayer:
This was recorded in The Cornish and West Country Litany, 1926, but it quite likely to be much earlier. Phrasefinder is also on
Tudor Phrases and Sayings - a book on the meanings and origins of the phrases and sayings that Shakespeare and Henry VIII used that we use still use every day. |
