agony aunt

English

Alternative forms

• Agony Aunt, agony aunty, agony auntie

Etymology

From the much earlier British term agony column, initially used for personal columns and then for advice columns, and the informal use of aunt for any older female fictive kin.

Noun

agony aunt (plural agony aunts)

1. (informal, UK, Ireland) Synonym of advice columnist, a writer of an advice column in a newspaper or other periodical, especially an actually or assumed female writer of such a column. [1974]

   Coordinate term: agony uncle

   You should write in to the agony aunt; she'll sort it out for you.

   • 1984, Sue Townsend, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Methuen, →ISBN, page 20:

     Pandora has just left my bedroom. I am just about devastated with frustration. I can't go on like this. I have written to Aunt Clara, the Agony Aunt.

   • 1999 February 3, Anthony Horowitz, “Strangler's Wood”, in Midsomer Murders:

     Yes, I have an agony aunt for a wife and an uncle for an employer. I'm well looked after.

   • 2021 June 20, Philippa Perry, “Ask Philippa: meet the Observer’s brilliant new agony aunt”, in The Observer‎^[1]:

     The big difference between agony aunts then and today is that now we have the internet to answer those tricky problems about how to eat an avocado pear (a lot of letters in the 70s were avocado-related) […]

2. (informal, UK, Ireland) Someone commonly consulted for advice about personal problems.

   I'm sick of everyone coming to me with their problems—I never wanted to be an agony aunt!

Translations

someone consulted for advice about personal problems

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 垃圾桶 (zh) (lājītǒng)

• Danish: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: leelian lepotuoli
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: Klara Klok m or f

• Polish: redaktor rubryki porad osobistych m pers, redaktorka rubryki porad osobistych f
• Portuguese: please add this translation if you can
• Turkish: please add this translation if you can

Further reading

• Eric Partridge (2005), “agony aunt”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volume 1 (A–I), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 15.