Online Etymology Dictionary

As for "hit the hay," by the way, according to the Dictionary of American Slang, 3rd ed., the first record of it is from 1912. Hay was bedding for animals, and stuffing for crude matresses. The "hay" doesn't seem to refer to any particular hay, and it's probably just there for the general alliterative value.

Etym--Giant welcome. I'm fascinated by etymology. And I'm sure I'll have lots of questions.

Glad to see you here, Etymy. Now we're cookin' with gas...um, grass, uh, hay.

etymonline,

The date cited for hit the hay is a surprise. I'd have guessed much earlier.

I don't have a quick reference for this (I'll see if I can hunt one up later), but this is off the top of my head:

The expression 'hit the hay' might be as recent as 1912 but at a far earlier date it was common to refer to a seaman's bedding as 'the donkey's supper.' In the days of sailing ships, merchant sailors were expected to bring their own 'matress' on board along with their belongings in a sea-chest. This bedding, usually just a sack filled with straw, was commonly referred to as 'the donkey's supper.' I wonder if the expression 'hit the hay' isn't an extension from that useage?

Hit the hay

Colloquial term for smoking marijuana

Interesting slang site

Try as I do, I can't push this expression back any further than 1900. There are two elements to the phrase.

Part of the problem is "hit" in the sense being used here -- "meet with, get at, reach, find, go to," like in "hit the books," "hit the pike." It can be traced back in isolated instances (usually military) to Old English, but it really only became common in late 19th century colloquial speech.

"Hit the grit" was U.S. slang circa 1888 for "get going, get out of here." And "hit the flat" was cowboy slang for "go out on the prairie."

"The hay" as colloquial for "bed" would seem to be something that could go back a long way, as has been pointed out here, but in fact the O.E.D. only dates that from 1903.

I also found a sea-going source for the expression. An etymological fantasy?

Roberta's right. Seamen used to bring their own bedding which was in fact hay in a blanket or bag.

I don't know if it's a false lead or not. But my impression (unscientific) is that sailors' slang is pretty well attested, from novels and stories. Yet the first reference to "hay" as slang for "bed" (1903) is hardly nautical. It's from a story by Chicago raconteur George Ade:

"When he had put in a frolicsome Hour or so with the North American Review, he crawled into the Hay at 9:30 p.m."

Another early reference is from P.G. Wodehouse:

"My experience of women has been that the earlier they leave the hay the more vicious specimens they are apt to be." [1930]

Other early citations I've seen are from Damon Runyon, Sinclair Lewis, and Norman Mailer. None is nautical.

The first explicit reference to "hit the hay," by the way, comes not from a direct source but from a publication called "Dialect Notes," which kept track of unusual expressions and words. Again, there's no mention of it being especially a sailors' term.

Other slang uses of "hay:"

"marijuana" (1940s "hit the hay" in this sense has already been brought up here).

Haybag "woman" (1851 -- Wodehouse would no doubt approve).

Hay burner "race horse" (1904); it also meant "marijuana smoker" in 1940s slang.

I found the naval source for "hit the hay" in a book entitled Common Phrases and Where They Come From by Myron Korach in collaboration with John Mordock.

When I posted the source as naval, many posters said that sailors didn't use beds made of hay. They slept in hammocks. This sounded reasonable to me. It still does. But here's what Korach says, "Before the advent of modern navies, every seaman had to furnish his own bedding. Sailing outfitters sold bundles of hay stuffed into coarse canvas covers for ship bedding. When a sailor went to an outfitter to buy his ship bed, which generally cost one shilling, he would ask for 'a hay.' So when a sleepy sailor wanted to tell his mates he was off to bed, he'd say he was going to 'hit the hay.'"

Sounds well documented, including the price of the bed.

I have read something exgtremely similar, Roberta. See my post re" 'donkey's supper' above.

Well, I belong to some, who think, hay on a ship is nonsense, at least in as a sailor's bed:
a) from own experience,
b) from my (printed) sources - which, I must admit, don't go further (=earlier) than the times of the conquest of America.

I do know, however that officers and 1st class passengers (not only meaning "First Class") had real beds, which where indeed filled with hay - like most on land as well.

Well, it's in print, and there's a story attached to it, but that doesn't necessarily qualify it as "well documented." Details don't qualify as documentation. Some of the best false etymologies are chock-full of details. In fact, too much precision of detail is almost a red flag. Where did Korach get this information? Is there a citation, from a primary source or another book? Is there a date, or a time frame, attached to the story? The "one shilling" seems to suggest British seamen, but the early citations of "hit the hay" are U.S.

I know -- granted, this is just trusting my memory -- that I've read information similar to Roberta's in a source other than Roberta's Korach. I also now it wasn't online but in printed matter. I'll just have to start rummaging through all my shelves and hope that the book in question isn't buried in a box in the self-storage space I rent.

hit the hay
I do know that in Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast," hammocks are the standard place for sailors to sleep.

Also, would hay really be the chosen substance for stuffing mattresses? Not straw?

Plenty of landsmen, on the other hand, would have slept (or done more interesting things) in hay ricks or haystacks -- hobos, farm laborers, etc.

Not definitely rejecting the sailor thing, just saying I'm still not seeing any good evidence for it, either in history or in the attested usage of the term; while a non-nautical origin is not implausible and fits the record.

etymonline,

For what it's worth, while compiling my own etymological lexicon I noted the nautical arguments of "hit the hay" and rejected them for much the same.

I love a good etymological deabate and actually hope to be proven wrong on this but thus far agree with your take on it.

The reason I backed down on the nautical hit the hay source was exactly for the reasons mentioned. No actual source for the source. And my own sense of what sailors would be sleeping on--hammocks.

I gotta corker for ya . . . my grandmother (born in 1899) once told me that the old timers referred to payday as "the ghost walks." Do you know, or can you find the origin?