YONKS

[Q] From Jill Cormier: I often say, ‘I haven’t seen you for yonks!’, meaning that I haven’t seen the person for quite a while. I have no idea where it comes from and it’s not in my Concise Oxford Dictionary. Can you help at all? Oh, by the way, I’m English.

[A] You would indeed have to be from Britain or the Commonwealth to know yonks, since I don’t think it’s found in the USA at all. Everyone is as puzzled as you are by this curious word, which appeared in Britain in the 1960s with no apparent link to any other word in the language. It usually turns up in the phrase for yonks, for a long time.

Many people have told me that they have been told, or assume, that it is a corrupted form of aeons. Others say that they have heard it is formed from “Year, mONth, weeKS”. These are intriguing and highly inventive speculations, but I suspect strongly that they are the usual well-meant attempts at finding an origin where none is known. The second origin is too convoluted to be at all plausible.

A few reference books suggest that it might be a clipped version of donkey’s years, also meaning a long time. This sounds quite daft on first hearing, but if you think about it, you can see how the onk of donkey might just have been prefixed by the y of years, perhaps as conscious or unconscious back slang. Another way of looking at it is that the source was a spoonerism on donkey’s years — yonkey’s dears, from which yonks arose by clipping. It’s only a theory, mind — nobody knows for sure one way or the other.

A quick tip: buy a new edition of your dictionary — yonks has been in the Concise Oxford Dictionary at least since the Ninth Edition.

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2009. All rights reserved. Contact me if you want to reproduce this piece, but first see my advice page, which also has notes about linking. Your comments and corrections are welcome.