Getting out of bed on the wrong side
Leaving the bed by the wrong side now stands for a bad temper. In 17th-century English plays, rising on the right side was a real charm for the day, listed alongside saying your prayers and washing.
What it may mean
Nobody announces in the morning that they are about to rise badly. The verdict arrives later, often from someone else, once the temper has shown. That makes it an omen read backward. A character in Lewis Machin's play The Dumb Knight does the same when trouble comes: he runs through his morning, sure he said his prayers, rose on his right side, washed his hands and eyes, met no splay-footed baker and saw no hare cross his path, as if the fault must lie in some step he missed. Searching the morning for the misstep is a habit as common now as it was then. Whatever is happening in the present is the better place to look.
Depending on how you saw it
Said about someone at breakfast
Families use the phrase as a soft label: it names a temper without asking for an explanation, and sometimes that is a kindness. It can also close a conversation that needed opening. When someone at your table is short-tempered in the morning, do you ask or do you label?
A bed pushed against the wall
With a bed against the wall there is only one way out, so the wrong side is impossible, yet people still use the phrase. The saying was never really about furniture. What do you blame on a bad start that probably has another cause?
Rising on the right side
In Marston's play What You Will, one character greets another with "You rise on your right side today," the cheerful twin of our phrase. That version has nearly dropped out of use. When did you last tell someone they had clearly begun the day well?
Why it happens in nature
Right after waking, people pass through a groggy spell known as sleep inertia. A 2006 University of Colorado study found it worst in the first few minutes after waking, with effects often detectable for up to two hours. A short temper over breakfast can owe more to that than to which way you climbed out.
What folk beliefs say
England
Rising on the right side was accounted lucky, Brand notes, citing old English plays such as Marston's What You Will, where a character says: "You rise on your right side to-day, marry."
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 173. View the page
England
In Lewis Machin's play The Dumb Knight, a worried character lists his morning precautions: he said his prayers, rose on his right side, washed his hands and eyes, put on his girdle last, met no splay-footed baker, and no hare crossed him.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (1849), vol. 3, p. 173. View the page
To reflect on
When a day goes sour, how far back do you look for the moment it turned?