wrong side of the blanket

wrong side of the blanket

Referring to being born to parents who were not married. Used in the phrase "born on the wrong side of the blanket." His parents eventually married, but that boy was born on the wrong side of the blanket.
See also: blanket, of, side, wrong
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

wrong side of the blanket, born on the

Illegitimate. This term was current in the eighteenth century and may well be obsolete. Tobias Smollett used it in Humphry Clinker (1771): “My mother was an honest woman. I didn’t come in on the wrong side of the blanket.”
See also: born, of, on, side, wrong
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer

wrong side of the blanket

Illegitimacy. A child born out of wedlock was said to have been born on the wrong side of the blanket, as if being under the covers was a luxury to which only legitimate babies were entitled. Other obsolescent phrases for an illegitimate baby are “natural child” and “love child.”
See also: blanket, of, side, wrong
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • born on the wrong side of the blanket
  • wrong side of the blanket, born on the
  • born out of wedlock
  • wedlock
  • woods colt
  • parentally challenged
  • be born that way
  • be/be born/be made that way
  • born in a barn
  • bred
References in periodicals archive
So was his mother, the thirteen-year-old Lady Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter on the wrong side of the blanket of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by Katherine Swynford.
January's anniversaries
The similarities between Cornwell's two heroes are obvious, with both men born the wrong side of the blanket, both brilliant fighters, both apparently irresistible to women, and who rise far above their station.
BOOKS: Cornwell marches into a new era
Iwas born on the wrong side of the blanket. That's what they called it in those days, back in the early 1950s.
Sisters under the skin; JENNIFER MONAN REACHED OUT AND TOUCHED PAT GOODWIN WHEN THEY WERE IN THE SAME PRAM AT A CHILDREN'S HOME. HERE, JENNIFER TELLS NATALIE MEDDINGS THE STORY OF THEIR UNIQUE FRIENDSHIP
George Meany, the late AFL-CIO President, dubbed them "wards of the American labor movement." The large AFL craft unions believed they had been born on the wrong side of the blanket and were illegitimate.
The decline and fall of labor's stepchildren