Why are romantic crushes called crushes? When an adolescent gets a crush on a teacher, for instance, why is it called a crush? What's being crushed? I don't get it.
And, since nobody answered my question on the trifle thread about the charger--the plate that goes under the plate you actually take your food from---why are chargers called chargers? What's being charged?
And why is love so painful anyway? There's Cupid shooting arrows into people's hearts, right? That's piercing pain. And then crushes sound as though you're being flattened. Why not say, "I've been flattened" to mean you're in love? Or have a crush?
Anyway, I'm sure you AWADers will illuminate my mind on this topic of Pain in Love--crushes, arrows, etc.
Beating regards,
WordWoed
Don't read if you like the NY Times Crossword..(3/13)
Today's crossword puzzle solutions was an Ambrose Peirce quote-- defining love as "a temporary insanity, curable by marriage."
Love is an opening.. we open our selfs up to others, physically and emotionally. and we let them become part of our very selves. when, we lose that person, through time, or death, or what ever reason, we lose that part of our selves we had invested with them. Love alwasy ends in pain.
all we can hope for, is that through loving, we gain more joy than we will lose.
Per Helen's quote by Ambrose Bierce, I suggest that you check out the book, A Curmudgeon's Garden of Love by Jon Winokur. It's chock full of such insights!
On a more serious note, I am reminded of Promethius, whose loving act towards humankind got him chained to a mountain where he had his liver (not heart, per Greek notions) plucked by vultures and birds of that ilk.
One might also refute Helen's belief that love always ends in pain by remembering that we English speakers only have one word for several different phenomena. Read C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves for starters.
Finally, Dub Dub, if you're hurting, I am sorry to hear it! Been there, done that!
pain in love ... crushes, arrows, etc.
"Falling" in love is the original metaphor, Wordwind, so perhaps "crush" takes its clue from this.
A "crush" is the junior version of a full-blown passion. Love blows us over, like a force of nature, while a "crush" merely weakens our knees.
Personally, I cannot believe that people smitten by a "crush" or Cupid's arrow experience any pain at all, de troy's observations notwithstanding. The arrow metaphor simply describes the suddenness and force of this uninvited, unexpected, emotion. Likewise "crush". It describes the nature of the impact, not the impact itself.
In the rush of a "crush", there is no thought of the pain which may follow.
Dear Geoff,
Nope, not hurting at all, but just curious about the term "crush"--and then the related terms that partner loving with pain. Just an interesting phenomenom of our language and perception. Why is something that's so good--electrifying (there's pain again!! Ha!), adrenaline-charged, life-giving--coupled with words of pain, such as crush, arrows, falling, etc.? Just curious.
Best regards,
WeirdWind
The falling metaphor (if it is that) is widespread: to fall asleep, fall into error, fall into conversation with, fall in line with, fall a-weeping.
Fall here means simply pass into a state. This sense might have been a gradual change from a different sense (I can't get to the OED to check), which is why I doubt whether it's a metaphor.
As to pain, I can't see anything metaphorical in the collocation of pain and love. It's purely literal, most of the time.
... or is that just me?
A favorite word sixty years ago was "inferiority complex". When we first mature physiologically, we have not yet been able to test our power of achieving our goals, and we often are timid about testing our powers, for fear of a rebuff. So it is safer to admire from a distance.We often first select someone unattainable, because that means we have an excuse for not making an advance. But I have no idea why this was called "a crush".
Why is love painful? Don't know,dear Dubdub, but t'was aye so, as the famous chansonsong has it:-
Plaisir d'amour ne dur qu'un instant,
The pleasures of love are momentary
Chagrin d'amour dur pour toute la vie
The pain of love is lifelong
Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened.
Re: And, since nobody answered my question on the trifle thread about the charger--the plate that goes under the plate you actually take your food from---why are chargers called chargers? What's being charged?
well, the M-W10th, says charger a large plate or platter, from the 14c. chargen..(to charge)
going back to charge, there are 2 listing, one for the 13c., one for the 14c.
and first defination, letter e, to fill or furnish fully.. or maybe fifth, letter c, to record an item as an expence, dept or obligation
Chargers "hold" a place.. the table is set for 12, but only 11 show up? the charger sits there, "recording an obligation"-- and for the 11 who do show up, the charger sits there waiting to be filled with food... i don't know which is the "correct" answer.
Long ago, in thread, Jo (jmh) gave us a thousand details on court etiquette for the table.. i suspect the charger, is there to create an "obligation" but its just a guess. we would need a historian, with a subspecialty of 14th century table manners and since my family is the kind that was always seated below the salt -- i don't know!
We are overpowered by the axis of evol - societal expectations and pheromones - and fall in love. When the reality of the person zeroed in on smashes up against the built up expectations of the imagined object of lust/love we are hurt.
The only basis I can find for the use of "crush" to mean an infatuation is from an etymological dictionary which defines crush as to break in pieces, overwhelm. I'm guessing that the use is an application of the term in the sense of overwhelm.
The source for charger is in the thread in which you first asked the question.
"You always hurt the one you love..."
--The Inkspots
Re: "You always hurt the one you love..."
Gee, i always thought that was from Oscar Wilde.. The Ballad of Redding Gaol
e, i always thought that was from Oscar Wilde.. The Ballad of Redding Gaol
And I thunk it was READING GAOL, but I can't reed. Damn! English really is nutty! (Oops, cross-thread alert!)
It took me half an hour to find the text, but here it is:
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol
Could you find the complete ballad? I didn't have much success, (even after i started spelling it right!) it is rather long.. but wonderful!
In Reading gaol,in Reading town (i think that is the opening line...)
EDIT--belowi tried again.. success
http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/57/104/16463/1/frameset.htmlall 7 pages, and my line is from the last part.. (page 7)
NicholasW NearsWeltanschauung
Fall here means simply pass into a state. This sense might have been a gradual change from a different sense (I can't get to the OED to check), which is why I doubt whether it's a metaphor.the OED has XI (11) general senses for
to fall, of which I refer you to number VII. to pass suddenly, accidentally, or in the course of events, into a certain condition.
38. a. Of persons: To pass (usually, with suddenness) in, into, to some specified condition, bodily or mental, or some external condition or relation. e.g., fall into unhope, fall to sleep, "He was fallyn in prosperite" (Chaucer), fall to pieces, fell out of favor, fell into a rage
b. to fall in love: to become enamoured. Const. with. Also transf. to become very fond of, or devoted to.
"Would'st thou then counsaile me to fall in loue?" (WS)
but I digress. returning to the evolution of senses, we traverse from
I. to descend freely (opposed to rise)
II. to sink to a lower level (ditto)
III. to lose (suddenly) the erect position (opposed to stand)
IV. to move precipitately or with violence; to rush
V. to be determined to a specified position; to have a certain incidence
VI. to come casually, or without design or effort, into a certain position
VII. to pass suddenly, accidentally, or in the course of events, into a certain condition
so for VI we find senses such as:
35. Of persons. a. To come by chance into a certain position. Now chiefly in phrase (of biblical origin), to fall among (thieves, etc.).
OED:QED - no metaphor
http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/
In 1895, at the peak of his career, Wilde became the central figure in one of the most sensational court trials of the century. The results scandalized the Victorian middle class; Wilde, who had been a close friend of the young Lord Alfred Douglas, was convicted of sodomy. Sentenced in 1895 to two years of hard labor in prison, he emerged financially bankrupt and spiritually downcast. He spent the rest of his life in Paris, using the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth. He was converted to Roman Catholicism before he died of meningitis in Paris on November 30, 1900.
http://education.yahoo.com/search/be?lb=t&p=url%3Ak/kourosI remember reading somewhere that the father of young Lord Douglas had the connections to crucify Wilde.
So he chose the wrong kouros to have a crush on.
"Wilde, Oscar," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
bankrupt and spiritually downcast
in other word - dispirited (e-cross-thread-icon)
It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.
--The Critic As Artist
The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
--In Conversation
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
--In Conversation
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself. And ends by deceiving others.
That is what the world calls a romance.
--A Woman of No Importance
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious; both are disappointed.
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
MRS. ALLONBY: My husband is a sort of promissory note; I'm tired of meeting him.
--A Woman of No Importance
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect--
simply a confession of failures.
--The Picture of Dorian Gray
...in married life three is company and two is none.
--The Importance of Being Earnest
I am not in favor of long engagements.They give people the opportunity of finding out each others' character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
--The Important of Being Ernest
If we men married the women we deserve we should have a very bad time of it.
--The Ideal Husband
The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding.
--Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
Englishwomen conceal their feelings till after they are married. They show them then.
--A Woman of No Importance
There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman.
It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
--Lady Windermere's Fan
The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous.
It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.
--The Importance of Being Earnest
It is the growth of the moral sense in women that makes marriage such a hopeless
one-sided institution.
--An Ideal Husband
What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and makes one believe things that are not true.
--The Nightingale and the Rose
Dear WO'N: One of my favorites by Oscar Wilde:
"Niagara Falls is the first but not the greatest disappointment in American married life."
A favorite word sixty years ago was "inferiority complex". - wwh
IDNC, IMR.
Hey, WW, since you're a music lover, I'm wondering if you love Prokofieff's "A Love for Three Oranges?" If so, you've got an Orange Crush! Drink up, girl!
Geoff, who had the above effervescent thought many years ago, when he was only Nehi, when he told it to his Pop.
Geoff, who had the above effervescent thought many years ago, when he was only Nehi, when he told it to his Pop.
I guess that was back when you were just a little Sprite!
he was only Nehi, when he told it to his Pop.
You mean told it to the towering grasshopper?
Dear Geoff,
My Prokofiev crush is on his two violin concertos--I two-time them both, attending to one of 'em while the other's back is turned! (Or while one of the CD's is lying on its back and can't see what I'm doing with the other one!)
From all this runnin' around I'm too pooped to pop!
Stuck on Milstein,
Wordstrings
back to speculation on falling into things.....in some parts of the world, women are referred to as "falling pregnant" (when they do, that is)
Sue was entered for the gymkhana but she had to drop out when she fell pregnant.
which reminds me of another unfathomable phrase: up the duff.
Or....hmmmm. Should I be posting this on the "British slang" thread?!
Dear mg: If those are Brit phrases, they are a bit maladroit. To "fall ill" is undesirable. Pregnancy ought be cause for happiness.
"Up the duff" appears to be related to slang "duff=buttocks". Not table talk.
"up the duff" means being pregnant so the buttocks would appear to be bypassed!!!!!!!!
the Duncster
back to speculation on falling into things.....in some parts of the world, women are referred to as "falling pregnant" (when they do, that is)
Sue was entered for the gymkhana but she had to drop out when she fell pregnant.
which reminds me of another unfathomable phrase: up the duff.
Or....hmmmm. Should I be posting this on the "British slang" thread?!
I've never heard of anyone 'falling pregnant' before so it must be a very localised term. Sounds almost North American. I've only heard 'became' or 'got' or 'made'. Always along those lines.
Up the Duff. There is a cake/pudding common in Blighty known as a plum duff. When baked it rises due to the yeasty content so the term 'up the duff' could be akin to the more common term 'bun in the oven'. I've never heard of duff being used as slang for buttocks but I'm guessing that the slang word was derived last. Anyone got any further thoughts??
I've never heard of duff being used as slang for buttocks
I've heard it used in "Get up off your duff and do some work around here!" Whether it was a USn source or not is beyond me.
I've never heard of anyone 'falling pregnant' before so it must be a very localised term. Sounds almost North American.
As a North American, I can say that I've never heard of 'falling' pregnant either. 'Got' is the word I've heard.
Well, while I haven't the foggiest notion where it came from, "falling pregnant" is a term I have known for a very long time and didn't even consider as potentially uncommon!
Well, it CAN happen standing up....
Dear TEd: I saw a picture of a mural in Pompeii illustrating your statement. Sorry I don't have URL to it.
>Well, while I haven't the foggiest notion where it came from, "falling pregnant" is a term I have known for a very long time and didn't even consider as potentially uncommon!
Me too, although it is a term I would have heard more from my parents generation than mine. I can't remember the word "pregnant" being used by them. They were more likely to say that someone was "having a baby".
If the phrase "fell pregnant" was used, it was often euphemised to fall or fell, as in "when I fell for the first time" [knowing look, to make sure you knew which kind of "fall"]. The Google searchability quotient gives the first listed sites using the term "fell pregnant" as nz, au or uk, so I assume that is where it is most used.
Dr Bill - I can only assume that the term relates to the later definition of "fall" to do with a change of state. I don't remember it only being used for "surprise" preganancies. I hadn't thought of a negative connotation until you mentioned it. In fact, on searching I found sites giving advice for those who were finding it difficult to fall pregnant.
Rubrick - I thought most pregancies in Eire before 1960 were a result of immaculate conception or a visit from the fairies - I can't imagine my elderly Irish relatives using the word pregnant, let alone "fell pregnant".
Just be careful - don't drink and park - accidents cause people!
A common US euphemism for getting pregnant is "knocked up."
Which caused me some consternation when I heard the phrase on a visit to UK ....
Then there is the old joke about a very pregnant woman crossing the street in front of a large, oncoming truck. The driver braked just in time to miss the mother-to-be and yelled out the window : "Hey Lady! You can get knocked down, too!"
>some consternation when I heard the phrase on a visit to UK ....
And at what time were you knocked up?
Well, while I haven't the foggiest notion where it came from, "falling pregnant" is a term I have known for a very long time and didn't even consider as potentially uncommon!
This explains a common term that I've heard over the decades but never quite understood - fallen woman. I knew what it meant but NOT why it was used. The light has shone.
As for my predecessors I have it on good faith that none of them were fairies and they were also far from immaculate!!
I must have been away with the fairies then.