Hump Day

Posted by Gary Martin on February 10, 2008 at 13:27:

In Reply to: Hump Day posted by Sheila Cunha on February 10, 2008 at 13:26:

: 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.

• Hump Day ESC 10/February/08