Have you ever heard the idiomatic expression “donkey's years”, or its more obsolete counterpart, “donkey’s ears”? Even though the meaning of this idiom is clear, its origins are still obscure and there is really a lot to unpack...

Meaning

Thanks to a quick search on our favourite linguistic search engine, Ludwig, we can immediately grasp that the meaning of the idiom is that of “a very long time”, something not too dissimilar to the expression “years and years”. Let's take a closer look at some of the examples provided by Ludwig, in order to better understand the contexts in which this idiom is actually used. For example, in an article about the English Channel scallop fishing dispute, published by the New York Times, we can read:

The French are a bit peeved because we are near to their 12-mile limit,” a spokesman for the British fishermen told The Daily Mail. “But the French have been fishing on our 12-mile limit for donkeys’ years.

In this other article on TechCrunch, Mark Zuckerberg makes the following statement about the technological advancements of chatbots:

No, not the kind of chatbots that have been around for donkeys’ years, adding robotic interjections to irreverent chatrooms when the Internet was a niche playground just for nerds. This new brainy breed of algorithms will, we’re told, be leveraging the power of advanced AI to engage and delight humans with unprecedented conversational smarts. People will be taking to robots like never before!

As for the variant “donkey’s ears”, we have above all to say that it is less common nowadays but it can happen that you come across it. For example, see the following sentence:

I haven't seen Jim in donkey's ears! How's he doing these days?

Donkey years/donkey’s ears origins

Once we have understood the meaning of this idiom and the contexts in which it is used, the question that comes to mind is… what the hell do donkeys have to do with time? As far as I know, donkeys are certainly cute creatures and – together with dogs – they were among the first animals to be domesticated. Even though there is a long tradition that associates donkeys with human stupidity – think of hats with donkey ears that once upon a time were used to punish bad students – the cliché does not do justice to the intelligence of these resilient, strong animals. Yet, I am pretty sure that donkeys are unable to time travel. So, what is the mystery behind this?

According to Oxford English Dictionary, one of the first written occurrences of this idiom dates back to 1916 and it can be found in the novel The Vermillion Box by E. V. Lucas:

Now for my first bath for what the men call ‘Donkey’s ears,’ meaning years and years.

However, that doesn't tell us much about the origins of the idiom. It is not even clear whether the variant “donkey’s years” or “donkey ears” came first. In this regard, some linguists have suggested that “donkey ears” might have been the most ancient form and that the meaning of the idiom finds its origin in the considerable length characterising the ears of those animals. The alternative “donkey’s years” may therefore have originated later on, as the result of a rhyming slang typical of Cockney, an English dialect mainly used in London and its environs. A rhyming slang consists in replacing a common word with another it rhymes with, a practice used to make the communication particularly elusive for outsider listeners. Do you want to know more about cryptolects? Click here!
Others, instead, suggested that the most ancient expression was “donkey’s years”. The connection with a long period of time, in this case, would be motivated by** the belief that donkeys live a long time**. According to this interpretation, therefore, “donkey’s ears” would be a variant arisen in a second time as the result a rhyming slang. In this regard, it must also be said, that according to some linguist the word “donkey” within this idiom would refer to a type crank, called donkey, used to load goods onto ships, rather than to the animal. These cranks used to be quite slow, hence the meaning of “donkey’s years”.

Ludwig’s wrap up

Scholars have not yet found agreement on the origin of the idiom “donkey’s years”/ “donkey’s ears” and perhaps the idiom is not even related to donkeys as animals, but to a kind of crank used in merchant ships that apparently as particularly slow. On the other hand, especially the first variant is still in use in current English and its meaning is pretty clear: it refers to a long period of time.