donkey's ears
Meaning: A very long time; ages.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Category: Animals
Origin: Bound up with a pun, and the two forms have been trading places for a century. The usual English phrase for a very long time is "donkey's years," and "donkey's ears" is its partner — the joke being that a donkey's ears are conspicuously long, which makes them a natural measure of length, and that years and ears differ by a single sound. Which came first is not settled: some accounts have the ears version as the original, reshaped into years because the sense is duration rather than distance, and others have it the other way round, with donkeys' genuine longevity supporting the years form and the ears arriving as a later pun. Both are attested from the early 1900s, and the ambiguity is probably the point rather than a problem to be solved.
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