Entry · catalog no. 1241
bad hair
/ /ˌbæd ˈhɛr/ /bad-HAIR
noun phrase · Nationwide · 1940s
✓ Verified
1.
Hair of African texture — tightly coiled, dense, shrinking — treated by the phrase itself as a failing.
“Her grandmother called it bad hair and had the pressing comb hot by eight every Saturday morning.”
2.
Used in the matched pair good hair / bad hair to rank people by texture, and through texture by ancestry and worth.
“Somebody at every reunion was still sorting the cousins into good hair and bad hair.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American, spoken in-group, most often about one's own family. It comes out of the color hierarchy the slave system installed — straighter hair and lighter skin bought proximity to the house — and after Emancipation the same measure was kept up by Black schools, churches, and social clubs. The vocabulary hardened into a matched pair, good hair against bad hair, and it was current enough by the Harlem Renaissance that Hurston recorded it in her 1942 glossary and glossed it flatly as Negro-type hair. The phrase is certainly older than that record; 1942 is the earliest dated citation, not the earliest use.
1942
Hurston lists "Bad Hair" in the glossary to "Story in Harlem Slang"
1970
The unrelated general-American "bad hair day" enters print and is later confused with this phrase
2009
Chris Rock's Good Hair puts the pair in front of a mass audience
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Nationwide · 1940s
Spoken by
Black Americans, in-group, across region and class; most often spoken by elders to children and among women
$BADHAIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady84 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
78/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1942
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Zora Neale Hurston — Glossary of Harlem Slang — glossary · 1942
Entry reads: Bad Hair — Negro-type hair. Published with "Story in Harlem Slang," American Mercury, July 1942
■
Merriam-Webster — "bad hair day" — reference · first use 1970
Establishes the unrelated general-American phrase as separate and later
■
+ Cite a sourceChris Rock — Good Hair — documentary film · 2009
Popularizer, not origin
See also