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Reader question: Please explain “hit the hay” in this sentence: “Afterwards, we were all very ready to hit the hay in our comfy beds (with heated blankets!) and get some rest for the next day’s adventures.” My comments: “Hit the hay” is an American idiom for going to bed, going to sleep. In our example, after all the activities and adventures of the day, everybody is tired and eager (very ready) to go to bed and have some rest. There is no real hay, of course, in their “comfy beds”, but instead “heated blankets”. But in the old days in America, when life was hard and things were hard to come by, people slept, literally, on hay. Or hay straws, that is. People used hay straws or hay sacks for a bed mat or mattress. So, back in the day, when people went to bed, some were indeed hitting hay, reaching for the hay straws. Early settlers in America must be hitting hay from the very beginning, as we can imagine, but in written form “hay” as bed dates back only to the early 20th century, according to Phrases.org.uk: The term hay was used in the USA to mean bed since the early 20th century; for example, from People You Know, by the American author George Ade, 1902: “After Dinner he smoked one Perfecto and then, 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.” | 
