Black Wednesdayn.
/ˌblak ˈwɛnzdeɪ/, /ˌblak ˈwɛnzdi/, U.S. /ˈblæk ˈwɛnzˌdeɪ/, /ˈblæk ˈwɛnzdi/ British. Finance.
(A name given to) Wednesday 16 September, 1992, when a massive surge in sales of the pound, perceived to be weak and overvalued, forced its official devaluation and the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
ΚΠ
1992 Evening Standard 16 Sept. 1 Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown said it was ‘Black Wednesday for the British economy’ and the second interest rate rise was ‘disastrous news’.
1994 K. Perry Business & European Community ix. 189 Then came ‘Black Wednesday’, 16 September. Sterling was sold in massive quantities and the Bank of England spending £13 billion of foreign currency to buy back pounds to support sterling's value was futile.
1995 Observer 17 Sept. (Business section) 2/4 Remarks by him about the need for a realignment were considered by the Cabinet to have caused the Black Wednesday fiasco, although they were in fact merely the straw that broke sterling's back.
2009 Guardian 15 June 25/4 The father of green shootism is usually taken to be Norman Lamont, who as chancellor after Black Wednesday claimed to have detected the first green shoots of recovery.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, September 2011; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1992