agony column

agony column (plural agony columns)

1. (chiefly UK) A column of a newspaper which contains advertisements relating to lost relatives and friends and other personal matters.
   • 2005, Tim Lindsey, Chinese Indonesians: Remembering, Distorting, Forgetting, page 165:

     Underlying the discussion of values in the magazine's "agony" columns is a theme of changing values, and we see a society aware of the difference between traditional and modern values and beginning to move away — albeit to a small degree — from traditional attitudes and behaviour.

   • 1881, Alice Clay, editor, The Agony Column of the "Times" 1800-1870, page vi:

     There is little doubt that lovers separated by unfortunate circumstances, or by angry parents, as well as bachelors meditating matrimony, have found in the "Agony Column" a safe means of secret correspondence.

2. A column written by an agony aunt, giving advice on readers' personal problems.

   Synonym: advice column

• agony aunt

• “agony column”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “agony column”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “agony column”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.