pride and joy

pride and joy idiom
The object of one's great pleasure, as in Our new grandson is our pride and joy, or Dana's car is his pride and joy. This term was probably invented by Sir Walter Scott in his poem Rokeby (1813), where he described children as “a mother's pride, a father's joy.”

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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