donkey’s years
idiom (UK informal)

- a very long time

The Cambridge Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

“Donkey’s years” dates from 1876 or earlier. Possibly chosen because donkeys can be long-lived animals. Despite the similarity, this predates and is likely not directly related to “donkey's ears”, a less frequently used rhyming slang term for years.

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MULE MAKERS AND MORE

Donkey DNA is a key contributor to a number of the world's hybrid creatures — because they are closely related to horses and zebras, donkeys can produce offspring with both. In fact, creating hybrids was standard practice for centuries because mules were popular working animals. The long history of creating donkey hybrids has led to an abundance of names for these mixed-species animals. Here are just a few:

- Mule: a hybrid of a male donkey and female horse

- Hinny: a hybrid of a female donkey and male horse

- John mule: the male offspring of a horse and donkey

- Molly: the female offspring of a horse and donkey

Mules are almost always sterile. But despite the slim odds of foal, breeders still came up with names for them:

- Jule, donkule: the offspring of a male donkey and female mule

- Hule: the offspring of a male horse and female mule

Because donkeys can mate with zebras, there are creative names for those offspring too:

- Zebra hinny, zebret, zebrinny: a hybrid of a male donkey and female zebra

- Zebroid, zebrass, zedonk: a hybrid of a female donkey and male zebr

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SYNONYMS

- for “a long period of time”

ages, an age (eternity), a lifetime, a month of Sundays, aeons, a stretch, all my born days, a millennium, a year and a day, a stretch, a forever and a day, a lengthy/long duration (period, span, time, while), a weary period (span), DONKEY’S YEARS, forever and ever, hours/days on end, seemingly forever, time immemorial (out of mind), forever, millennia, years on end, yonks

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

"How about this evening we go to that Chinese restaurant in the High Street? We haven’t been there for DONKEY’S YEARS."

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