September 30, 1996

honeymoon

My 12-year-old daughter asked me how the word "honeymoon" came to be, and I couldn't answer her. We had fun guessing, but I promised her I'd find out from the "word expert." So, what's the story? By the way, we find this site fascinating, and the information here has led to some interesting discussions. Keep up the good work!

The original sense of honeymoon was 'the period of pleasure immediately following a marriage', that is, before things get settled into a routine and the bride and groom get sick of each other.

Semantically, it comes from the concept of honey being sweet, and sweetness being pleasurable--sweet meaning 'pleasurable' has been used in English for over a thousand years. Moon either refers to 'a month' (i.e. roughly the period between full moons), being the amount of time everything's peachy, or, metaphorically, to the moon itself, which begins to wane again as soon as it has turned full.

The sense 'a vacation taken by a newly married couple' is an extension of this sense. The word first appears in the sixteenth century; the 'vacation' sense arose by the eighteenth century.

P.S. Glad you like the site.