Meaning
The legendary restlessness said to strike a marriage in its seventh year - the itch to wander, supposedly clinical, universally understood. Applied to anything, it names the moment familiarity starts to scratch. Wry and forgiving - it treats wandering as comedy rather than tragedy; note the medical ghost in the phrase whenever old letters mention an itch. Regional use: General English; older medical term, modern sense from 1952-55.
Origin
Before Broadway, the itch was literal: seven-year itch was an old name for scabies, the seven-year label marking a stubborn complaint, and Wiktionary's senses still list the medical one alongside the marital. The modern meaning arrived as psychological jargon dramatized: George Axelrod's 1952 stage play built a comedy around a man left alone for the summer while his wife and son vacation, and Billy Wilder's 1955 film - with Tom Ewell reprising the role and Marilyn Monroe upstairs - fixed the phrase forever, its psychiatrist character asserting that almost all men are driven to extra-marital affairs in the seventh year of marriage. The film's subway-grate scene became one of the century's iconic images, and the phrase left the theatre as household shorthand for mid-marriage temptation - a diagnosis, a joke, and a warning in three words.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a case of the seven-year itch
- seven-year itch
- the itch strikes
Usage Examples
- The gallery's curators were contractually refreshed every seventh season, a cultural seven-year itch.
- Counsellors report the seven-year itch now arrives at five, inflation being what it is.
- He blamed the motorhome purchase on the seven-year itch; the motorhome had other ideas.