agony aunt

agony aunt (plural agony aunts)

1. (informal, British, Ireland) A writer of an advice column in a newspaper or other periodical.

   Synonyms: advice columnist, agony auntie, agony aunty

   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.

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

     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, British, 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!

• agony column

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