many happy returns
2
4.9
- idiom
- UK
:
muchas felicidades
- Many happy returns, my dear Marjorie.
- wish you many happy returns
Examples
-
Now, "Many happy returns of the day."
-
Many happy returns of the day to Miss Summer Rose!
Blog text (24) -
And, we say, "Many happy returns of the day."
-
- Many happy returns, Joe.
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Congratulations and many happy returns.
Fiction book (1995) -
Many happy returns of the day.
-
Many happy returns to you, Isaac.
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Many happy returns of the day, Marjorie.
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Many happy returns, Molly.
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Wishing you many happy returns on your birthday, Mark!
Synonyms
34
1.0
A warm message wishing someone happiness and success
1
5.1
A wish that someone will enjoy many happy birthdays
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although the constituents 'many', 'happy' and 'returns' are individually transparent, 'returns' here uses an archaic sense of recurring occasions/anniversaries and the whole string is a conventionalized congratulatory formula. A B1 learner who knows the words might guess something about repeated happiness but would not reliably infer the fixed birthday/good-wishes meaning without prior exposure, so the connection is partial rather than fully predictable.
Etymology
Many happy returns comes from an old idea that a happy day would return again and again. People imagined the day coming back like a friend, so saying many happy returns became a way to wish someone 'many more happy days'.