agony column
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English
Noun
agony column (plural agony columns)
- (chiefly UK) A column of a newspaper which contains advertisements relating to lost relatives and friends and other personal matters.
- Near-synonym: problem page
- 2005, Tim Lindsey, Chinese Indonesians: Remembering, Distorting, Forgetting, page 165:
- Underlying the discussion of values in the magazine's "agony" columns is a theme of changing values, and we see a society aware of the difference between traditional and modern values and beginning to move away — albeit to a small degree — from traditional attitudes and behaviour.
- 1881, Alice Clay, editor, The Agony Column of the "Times" 1800-1870, page vi:
- There is little doubt that lovers separated by unfortunate circumstances, or by angry parents, as well as bachelors meditating matrimony, have found in the "Agony Column" a safe means of secret correspondence.
- A column written by an agony aunt, giving advice on readers' personal problems.
- Synonym: advice column
Related terms
References
- William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E Smith, editors (1911), “agony column”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
- “agony column”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- “agony column”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.