Origin of the Dear John Letter
 Copyright © Wendy Russ

I received a letter asking me what the origin of the "Dear John Letter" was. I scoured the Internet looking for some clues as to where the expression came from. I couldn't find anything except what everyone knows... that it's an expression used for a particular type of letter written by a woman to a man in order to break up with him.

I'm lucky to have a strong network of "Know-It-Alls" (KIAs) that will indulge my frequent curiosities. I asked my friend Lunaea if she knew because she knows a ton of stuff about language and words and grammar (if you need a copy editor, she's your gal). She patched me through quickly to her own personal "KIA Network" and we had some success from someone there.

Anne (eadon@earthlink.net) had this to say:

"Yes, it is a war reference, and I checked with the ever-trusty OED on this one. It looks like it's WWII, more than likely; although I suspect the name 'John' here has a double meaning — first it's slang for penis, and also there's that 1917 song "Over There" (Geo. Cohan) with its refrain 'Johnnie get your gun', which would make the name John mean, among the thousand other things it stands for, a soldier..."

She sites the following Oxford English Dictionary references:

1945 Democrat & Chron. (Rochester, N.Y.) 17 Aug. 17/2: 'Dear John,' the letter began. 'I have found someone else whom I think the world of. I think the only way out is for us to get a divorce,' it said. They usually began like that, those letters that told of infidelity on the part of the wives of servicemen... The men called them 'Dear Johns'.

1947 Amer. Speech XXII. 187: It was a 'Dear John'. Quite a lot of the fellows had already had their 'Dear Johns'.

1957 W. CAMP Prospects of Love xvi. 103: There was a note from Fenny on the kitchen table. For the moment he enjoyed the irony of thinking it might be what the Americans called a 'dearjohn'.

1964 J. PHILIPS Laughter Trap (1965) I. ii. 13: Peter..had gone to war..in love with a girl named Elizabeth Schofield... He had received a 'Dear John' letter from Elizabeth, telling him she was married...

1971 Guardian 7 Jan. 11/8: The going is getting distinctively gritty for Pan Am, so much so that 1,876 of its staff are now walking round with a new year 'Dear John' from... the airline's president.

For your amusement, some "Dear John" links:

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