Entry · catalog no. 1137
wash day
/ /ˈwɑʃ ˌdeɪ/ /WOSH-day
noun phrase · United States, nationwide; also in Black communities across the diaspora · 2010s
✓ Verified
1.
A recurring day — most often a weekend day — deliberately cleared for the full sequence of Black hair care: sectioning, detangling, shampooing or cleansing, deep conditioning, rinsing, moisturizing, sealing, and then setting the hair into whatever style has to carry the next week or two. It is named as a day rather than a task because it takes the better part of one; tightly coiled hair is fragile when wet and shrinks dramatically, and the work does not compress. In households with children it is also a transfer of knowledge and a scene of physical closeness — a child seated on the floor or at the kitchen sink while a mother, aunt, or grandmother works through the head — and adults who grew up with it describe it with the full range of feeling, from dread of the detangling comb to the specific comfort of hands in your hair. Among adults it also functions as a self-maintenance ritual, and in the natural hair community it is a scheduling term: routines, products, and product reviews are all organized around it.
“I can't do Saturday brunch, it's wash day and I'm four hours in with two sections left.”
Origin & Attribution
This is a Black household term, kept in the home and in the barber- and beauty-shop long before it was ever printed as such. Its life in Black families runs at least through the twentieth century and is bound to the practical fact that afro-textured hair is washed less frequently and worked on more intensively than straight hair; the day-long form is a consequence of the hair, not a lifestyle choice. The phrase moved into print and into the wider culture only recently, carried by the same online natural hair community that produced big chop and transitioning, and then into books: Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith's mini comic Wash Day in 2018, expanded as Wash Day Diaries by Chronicle Books in 2022, and Tomesha Faxio's photographic book Wash Day from Clarkson Potter in 2024. Wash day is not a coinage of the 2010s natural hair boom, and it is not a repurposing of the old American laundry sense. The homonym is real — wash day meant laundry day in general American English long before this — but the Black hair-care sense is an independent household usage, and the two have never been confused by anyone who uses either.
2018
Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith publish the mini comic Wash Day, the earliest verified titled use of the term in the Black hair sense
2022
Chronicle Books publishes Wash Day Diaries, putting the term on a mainstream trade list
2024
Tomesha Faxio's photo book Wash Day is published by Clarkson Potter and wins an NAACP Image Award
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
United States, nationwide; also in Black communities across the diaspora · 2010s
Spoken by
Black women and girls overwhelmingly; also Black men with locs or longer natural hair, and parents of any background caring for a child's textured hair
$WASHDAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising8 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
2018
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
■
Tomesha Faxio, Wash Day: Passing on the Legacy, Rituals, and Love of Natural Hair (Clarkson Potter / Penguin Random House, 2 April 2024), ISBN 9780593579718
book · printed
■
Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith, Wash Day (self-published mini comic, 2018); expanded as Wash Day Diaries (Chronicle Books, 5 July 2022)
book · printed
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+ Cite a sourceCNN Style, "In photos: 'Wash Day' honors a classic Black hair ritual," 19 April 2024
news · reported
See also