It’s “Hump Day!”
How to Survive the Wednesday Midweek Slump
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Wednesday. What a day! It is the middle day of the week, it has the most letters in its name of all of the days of the week, and it is not pronounced the way it is spelled. Evolved from the Old English Wodnesdaeg and Middle English Wednesdei words for Wooden’s Day, Wednesday mixes the Teutonic god Woden and the Roman god, Mercury, which sort of explains its unusual spelling and pronunciation. Maybe we should get an award just for being able to say “Wins-day”!
Why is Wednesday called “Hump Day?”
“Hump Day” is an idiom primarily in use in North America since about the 1960s. An idiom is a figure of speech that is a word or phrase with a figurative meaning that is not immediately apparent. Hump Day is based on the paradigm that the five-day, Monday-Friday workweek is akin to a mountain that one must climb, so Wednesday is the “peak” of the week. On Monday and Tuesday, you are starting to climb the mountain, while on Thursday and Friday, you are on the way down to the end of the week. So once you’ve worked through Wednesday, you’ve made it over the “hump” and the remaining days left to reach the weekend are somewhat easier.
Of course, making a camel the image of “hump day” was natural because of the hump on the camel’s back. Although the traditional Monday-Friday, 9–5 workweek is not as prevalent as in the past, but Wednesday (or any day that is in the middle of a person’s workweek) is still considered “hump day.” For many people, hump day can also become a slump day as motivation and energy can begin to slump around mid-week.
You CAN conquer “Hump Day” and survive the Wednesday Midweek Slump
- On Monday you set…
