Late nineteenth-century, stereographic photo of a honeymoon couple at Niagara Falls, New York
8 January 2021
As the word is used today, a honeymoon is a vacation taken by a newly married couple. The etymology is rather straightforward: honey (i.e., something sweet) + moon (brief period of time). It is also used figuratively to mean a period of good relations or enthusiasm at the beginning of an endeavor, often a political one. But it wasn’t always like this. Initially the word was used with an emphasis on the brevity of the period, which would inevitably wane, just like the moon.
The earliest known use of the term is in a 1546 dialogue by poet and playwright John Heywood, in which he incorporates a large number of aphorisms and clichés, including honeymoon:
Who, the daie of weddyng and after, a while,
Could not loke eche on other, but they must smile.
As a whelpe for wantonnes in and out whipps,
So plaied these tweyne, as mery as thre chipps.
Þe there was god (quoth he) whan all is doone.
Abyde (quoth I) it was yet but hony moone.
The blacke oxe had not trode on his nor her foote.
But er this branche of blys coulde reache any roote,
The floures so faded, that in fiftene weekes,
A man myght espie the chaunge in the cheekes,
Both of this pore wretch, & his wife this pore wenche.
Their faces told toies, þ[at] Totnam was turnd frenche
And all their light laughyng turnd and translated
Into sad syghyng, all myrth was amated.
The emphasis on waning and souring of the couple’s love is repeated in the word’s first appearance in a dictionary, John Higgins’s 1572 revision of Richard Huloet’s dictionary:
Hony moone, a terme prouerbially applied to such as be newe maried, whiche will not fall out at the firste, but th'one loueth the other at the beginning exceadingly, the likelyhode of their exceading loue, appearing to aswage, which time the vulgare people call the hony moone. Aphrodisia, Feriae hymenaeae.
And the figurative use of the term appears by 1579 in a tract about diplomatic relations between England and France by pamphleteer John Stubbes:
It might be honiemoone awhile with them but aftervvard french would be no deinty dish, and these seely interpreters vvere happye if they might quietly stand without the dore.
The sense of a post-wedding vacation doesn’t appear until the end of the eighteenth century, when it appears in William Beckford’s translation of Johann Carl A. Musäus’s The Nymph of the Fountain. Although here the meaning of the word itself is literally that of the initial period of wedded bliss, only in a context of and perhaps with the expectation that it would be spent on a vacation:
The new-married couple spent their honey-moon in Augspurg [sic], in mutual happiness and innocent enjoyments, like the first human pair in the garden of Eden.
Honey-moon here is translating Spieljahr in the German original, which would seem to be a play on words by Musäus, as this is not a standard meaning of the German word, which is typically used to refer to a theatrical or sports season.
Over time, honeymoon the connotation of the loving bliss being temporary has been lost—although retained in the figurative, political sense. The vacation itself, however, is still brief.
Sources:
Heywood, John. A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1546, 1.7, sig. B4r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Higgins, John. Huloets Dictionarie Newelye Corrected, Amended, Set in Order and Enlarged. London: Thomas Marshe, 1572. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Musäus, Johann Carl August. “The Nymph of the Fountain.” Popular Tales of the Germans, vol. 2 of 2. William Beckford, trans. London: J. Murray, 1791, 266. Google Books.
Musäus, Johann Karl August. Volksmährchen der Deutschen. vol. 2 of 4. Gotha: Carl Wilhelm Ettinger, 1788, 270. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2014, s.v. honeymoon, n., honeymoon, v.
Stubbes, John. The Discouerie of a Gaping Gulf VVhereinto England Is Like to Be Swallovved by Another French Mariage. London: H. Singleton for W. Page, 1579, sig. D4r.
Photo credit: M. H. Zahner, “Spending their Honeymoon at Niagara,” late nineteenth century, New York Public Library. Public domain in the United States as a mechanical reproduction of a work that was produced before 1925.