What does "yonks" mean?

A long time (especially a longer time than expected); ages

What is a synonym for "yonks"?

Common synonyms include: age, donkey's ears, donkey's ears, eld, eon, eternity.

Yonks

//jɒŋks// noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1
A long time (especially a longer time than expected); ages Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, plural, plural-only, slang
"Haven’t seen him in yonks!"

Synonyms

All synonyms

age donkey's ears donkey's ears eld eon eternity

Antonyms

All antonyms

bit flash

Example

More examples

"I haven't seen a cassette Walkman for yonks. Do you still use one?"

Etymology

Unknown. First seen in print around 1960. One theory is that it comes from donkey's ears; another is that it is an abbreviation of years, months and weeks.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.