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Discuss Email this Feedback RSS/XML Permalink A.Word.A.Day--Darby and Joan This week's theme: eponyms -- words coined after someone. Darby and Joan (DAHR-bee and joan) noun A devoted old couple leading a quiet, uneventful life. [After a couple named in a 18th century poem in The Gentleman's Magazine (London).] In 1735 Henry Woodfall, a printer's apprentice, wrote a ballad titled "The joys of love never forgot: a song" about a happily married elderly couple. His inspiration for those characters was his own boss John Darby and his wife Joan: "Old Darby, with Joan by his side, You've often regarded with wonder: He's dropsical, she is sore-eyed, Yet they're never happy asunder ..." As you can imagine, he wrote this poem after Darby's death. This poem in turn became an inspiration for follow-up poems and eventually Darby and Joan became a metaphor. In the UK, clubs for old people are still called Darby and Joan clubs. -Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org) "On the shores of holy Lake Manosarovar there is a nameless hotel run by a very elderly couple, a sort of Tibetan Darby and Joan." Karen Swenson; At Tibetan Hotels, Don't Expect the Light To Be Left On; The Wall Street Journal (New York); Dec 4, 2001. X-Bonus To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior "righteous indignation" -- this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

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