"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

Thursday, 3 June 2010

Agony Aunt

 
An agony aunt is someone who answers questions about personal problems in a newspaper or magazine. Agony columns go back to at least 1860 – at which time they included messages for missing relatives – but the phrase itself seems to date back to about the 1930s. Neither phrase was greatly used until the 1970s and both are mainly restricted to Britain.
 
Posted by at
Labels:

1 comment:

  1. DawnTreader8 June 2010 at 15:47

    Oh that's a good word, I'll have to try and remember that... I think in Swedish we call them heart columns but I can't think of a word for the person answering the questions.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)