Word.ws English Dictionary

Dear Abby

Dear Abby proper noun: an advice column written under the pen name Abigail Van Buren.

Proper noun

Dear Abby

  1. An advice column written under the pen name Abigail Van Buren.
  2. The columnist.
    • I am not Dr. Phil, Dear Abby, or a qualified relationship counselor.2014, Frederick Hertz, Emily Doskow, Making It Legal, Nolo, →ISBN, page 114
    1. Pauline Phillips (1918–2013), the initial columnist (until 2002) and sister of fellow columnist Eppie Lederer (who wrote under the pen name Ann Landers).
      • Baby, you know it. Even Dear Abby’d say the same.1971, Jim Jacobs, Warren Casey, “Beauty School Dropout”, in Grease
      • Well I wrote to Ann Landers and Dear Abby too / And sought their advice as to what I should do1976, “Me and the Elephant”, performed by Gene Cotton

Questions about Dear Abby

What does Dear Abby mean?
Dear Abby means an advice column written under the pen name Abigail Van Buren.
What part of speech is Dear Abby?
Dear Abby is a proper noun.

Words near Dear Abby in the dictionary

  1. deapplied
  2. deapplies
  3. deapply
  4. deapplying
  5. dear
  6. Dear Abby
  7. Dear Colleague letter
  8. dear diary
  9. dear God
  10. dear heart
  11. dear hearts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Dear Abby (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Dear Abby.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dear_abby. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.