What exactly is the origin of the expression “Seven Year Itch”? I heard it was related to scabies. Is that true?
Manduck
November 9, 2005, 10:05am
2
I have only heard it in relation to the movie. The idea there is that after seven years of marriage, the husband’s eye starts to wander. I don’t know if the expression already existed, or it was just made up for the movie.
Pushkin
November 9, 2005, 11:18am
3
Vulcans have been known to suffer from a form of it
Joey_P
November 9, 2005, 2:08pm
4
And people that have been in a stale marrige for seven years and suddenly find Marilyn Monroe as the upstairs neighbor…with convenient through-the-ceiling access.
rainy
November 9, 2005, 2:26pm
5
According to
http://www.wordwizard.com/ch_forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4357&SearchTerms=seven,year,itch
I thought it was older than that.
-rainy
Xema
November 9, 2005, 3:50pm
6
This link says the phrase definitely is older.
This phrase was researched by William Safire and he gives the details in “Watching My Language: Adventures in the Word Trade” (Random House, New York, 1997). The expression “seven-year itch,” in various forms, referring to a skin malady is old. Henry David Thoreau wrote, in 1854: “These may be but the spring months in the life of the race. If we have had the seven-years’ itch,’ we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord.” Other early uses: " ‘Dialect Notes’ noted in a 1907 New Hampshire usage. ‘You’re worse than the seven years’ itch." And poet Carl Sandburg, in his 1936 ‘The People, Yes,’ caught the cadence of the American dialect by using the phrase in what seems to be a physical-annoyance sense: ‘May you have the sevenyear itch,’ was answered, ‘I hope your wife eats crackers in bed.’"
But Mr. Safire learned that the use of the term “seven-year itch” for sexual unrest after seven years’ of marriage was an invention of playwright George Axelrod. “The Seven Year Itch” was the title of the 1952 Broadway play and the movie, made three years later, starring Marilyn Monroe and (Kentuckian) Tom Ewell.
