happy ending

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happy ending (plural happy endings)

1. (literature) A clichéd conclusion in which all loose ends are tied up and all main characters are content.

   Synonym: eucatastrophe

   • 1784, The Novelist's Magazine, volume XV, London: Harrison and Co., page 1263, column 1:

     And how was this happy ending to be brought about? Why, by this very eaſy and trite expedient; to wit, by reforming Lovelace, and marrying him to Clariſſa.

   • 1827 June 8, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, page 4, column 3:

     The heroine was killed, and since then the happy ending has only been preserved in an appendix in the play.

   • 1930, Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness:

     Life is not to be conceived on the analogy of a melodrama in which the hero and heroine go through incredible misfortunes for which they are compensated by a happy ending.

   • 1944, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 1, in The Razor’s Edge , 1st American edition, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., →OCLC, section i, page 1:

     Death ends all things and so is the comprehensive conclusion of a story, but marriage finishes it very properly too and the sophisticated are ill-advised to sneer at what is by convention termed a happy ending.

   • 1957 July 6, What’s Opera, Doc?, spoken by Bugs Bunny (Mel Blanc):

     Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?

   • 1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 25:

     Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.

   • 1987, “Storybook Love”, Willy DeVille (music):

     And she said: / "Don't you know that storybook loves, / Always have a happy ending."

2. (vulgar, slang, euphemistic) A hand job, especially one provided by the masseuse to the client at or towards the end of a massage.
   • 2009, Chelsea Handler, Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 147:

     “I don't want sucky sucky, I just want a massage. It's okay if she doesn't know how to give a massage, but could she at least tickle my back?” “No happy ending!” she yelled, getting louder. “I don't want a happy ending, you hot mess, I just want a little back rub. […] ”

• happily ever after
• good ending

• happy ending on Wikipedia.Wikipedia