It's causing me to inadvertently stumble upon websites that eat away at my faith in humanity.
Unfortunate Discovery #1:
I was working on a NYT crossword puzzle (I am addicted to these things). If I get really stuck, I use Google or Wikipedia to help me find answers. I also use dictionary.com to double-check spellings (normally my spelling, as you know, is excellent, but something about the little boxes gets me all muddled, especially about vowels and double consonants). Anyway, I had Google open because I'd used it to find out the first name of the dude that invented the Geiger counter (Hans), and I needed to check the spelling of "alibi" (for some reason I thought it might be "alabi"). So I googled it, since the website was already up. I discovered that I was spelling it correctly, and I also discovered this website. Go look at it. (It's not porn or anything else socially inappropriate, but it may not be a great idea to look at it on your work computer.) Tell me you're not totally horrified.
Unfortunate Discovery #2:
DWE and I got into a little debate on the phone this evening regarding whether "smitten" was a form of the word "smite" (for some reason I didn't think it was, but it is). So I tried to go to dictionary.com to check, but for some reason my browser wouldn't open the page, so I resorted to Google again. That's when I discovered the product being advertised on this website. Again, not porn, and not socially inappropriate in the "widely-understood definition of the term" (sorry...X-Files quote), but it may deeply disgust you. It deeply disgusted me. It made me never want to hold hands with anyone again.
I think I'm going to go to bed now, and hope that the world seems less disturbing tomorrow.
Oh, and do any of you have an opinion about that whole smite/smitten thing? I'm not debating that "smitten" is an adjective form of the verb "smite", of course, but I'm very curious about how a verb that means (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here) "to hit someone really hard with something big like a hammer" begat an adjective that came over the years to mean "adoring in an intense and probably obnoxiously cute way." It's not that I can't see the logical progression, it's just that it seems totally bizarre. Any thoughts? (I'm looking at you, N.)
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10 comments:
mom and bill need a smitten!
(I tried posting this earlier -- not sure if it went through...)
Basically, the transformation of smite and smitten illustrates -- and rather beautifully, at that –- the ways that language changes over time. At the same time, it also illustrates another interesting topic: the way our conception of love has changed since the over time. That is to say, the answer to your question is not only a history of a word, but also the history of our culture’s construction/understanding of an emotion.
In short, the two words are really one word: the word smitten is the participle (not adjective) form of to smite, the original meaning of which is “to throw” or “to strike.” This sense is perhaps exemplified in the phrase “David smote Goliath.” We could also say that “Goliath was smitten by Goliath” and still be grammatically correct.
Around the 1300s, the word smite (and its participle, smitten) came to be figuratively applied to emotions. Early on, the connection to striking or hitting was clear: the OED has “wit strang dred he smiton was,” and also includes quotes that apply the term to avarice, “Ielousye,” “feare,” “terrour” and amazement, the last of which is dated 1671 (and comes from Milton, for those keeping track). Each of these is a powerful emotion that figuratively recalls hitting or striking, right? If you don’t see the connection, look at this quote, which makes the figural language quite explicit: “my flesh is smytten with feare” (this is dated 1535, which means I’m skipping around in time, but no matter).
By the mid-1600s or so, the term is applied to positive emotions, and to love. The sense is fundamentally the same: we could perhaps write, “my flesh is smitten with desire” to illustrate this similarity. And when we say this, what we are saying, in a manner of speaking, is that “my flesh is struck (or pierced, or what have you) with desire.” Similarly, when we say “I am smitten,” we’re saying “I am hit/struck [by his/her beauty,” where the phrase enclosed within square brackets is the implied and understood “conclusion” of the conventional phrase (which leaves it out, likely due to an idiosyncrasy of language).
And the OED’s definitions themselves (that is, the material written in the contemporary era, rather than the historical quotations) provide yet another key into understanding the language. The dictionary associates the emotional sense of smite and smitten with “discompos[ing] or disquiet[ing]” and “distress[ing] or perturb[ing] (a person, the mind, conscience, etc.).”
Now, when we say “I am smitten” today, we don’t tend to think of this as an uncomfortable or violent emotion. But Early Modern conceptions of love often regarded the emotion precisely in terms of “disquiet.” This is embodied most explicitly in the writing of Dante’s friend, Guido Cavalcanti, and is sometimes regarded as the “Cavalcantian conception of love,” which takes love for a violent disordering of spirit and body. “You whose look pierced through my heart,” Cavalcanti writes, “Waking up my sleeping mind, / Behold an anguished life, / Which love is killing with sighs.” In this sonnet, love not only kills, but “cuts” the soul and “undoes” the self. And, to illustrate the dual meaning that resides in “I am smitten” almost perfectly, love also “thr[ows] an arrow into” the speaker’s heart, leaving his soul “quivering.” (Elsewhere, Cavalcanti describes love as an archer, "whose only joy is killing someone else." Could Ezra Pound -- whose translation this is -- have substituted "smiting" for "killing"?)
So when, today, we say “I am smitten,” we are referring to an archaic notion that takes love as a violence, even though we might mean an emotion "cheaper" than would deserve the dignity of a term like love. Or, to put it differently, the rhetoric of love persists even if its meaning, and our understanding of love, has changed. This manifests itself in other English terms for love, as well: “striking beauty,” and “crush,” for example, and we don’t always mean these terms literally, either. (An analogous situation occurs every time we describe something as “awesome” without meaning that it overwhelms us or, to be even more strictly literal, fills us with an admixture of reverence and dread at divine power.)
All of this points towards one facet of linguistic change: forms, such as words and expressions, often remain intact, even when the content expressed by them has undergone significant and substantial changes.
Oops. "Since the over time" is, quite obviously, a typo. Strike "since the."
Oops again! "Goliath was smitten by Goliath" should read "Goliath was smitten by David."
Ok - I didn't read nathan's response... sorry. But I generally think of 'smitten' as meaning - you are awe struck or have been awe struck by someone. Very much like you got hit over the head by love. Not unlike the violent imagry of being 'hit by cupid's arrow'. It's softened & evolved over the years, sure, but yeah... I think it makes sense.
BTW - the Smitten Mitten?
I want you to shoot me dead if I ever get so sappy as to want one of those.
N-thank you, that was totally fascinating. and i was reminded of the difference between a participle and an adjective (and a gerund, for that matter, since they were also discussed in the section of the grammar book i looked in).
i think the modern notion of love (at least as i've experienced it) definitely retains some of that notion of "disquiet" or violence (or at least suddenness of onset, which i guess is a sort of violence, and definitely a cause for disquiet). i think maybe part of the reason that the violent origins of the word seems so out of sync with its current context is that i think of "smitten" more as a mutual feeling (and when it came up in the conversation i was having with Dr. J it was used in that way). an unrequited-love-is-like-getting-violently-stabbed metaphor seems a little more apt to me.
but then again, i also associate "smitten" with the early stages of an emotional attachment, so insofar as the violence metaphor implies that something intense and unexpected has just happened to the smitten person, it also seems logical to me.
maybe i'm in the minority in having very cheesey associations with the word "smitten". but if not, i have a theory about why it became such an unviolent-sounding word despite the fact that love is still somewhat associated with violence: it rhymes with kitten and mitten, which are both sort of cute words (or at least cute things), so it just sounds cute too.
so, can i use "smote" as a participle form of smite? because i would be so down with saying "i'm totally smote by DWE."
rebel-yes, i will shoot you, or myself should i ever express an interest in that product. especially since there are two perfectly good ways to keep ones hand warm while still holding another person's hand: 1. wear gloves, and deal with the fact that your skin isn't touching, or 2. put your clasped hands in your or your hand-holding-partner's coat pocket (since it's apparently so damn cold, one of you should be wearing a coat).
Mega-kudos to N for the swell etymological breakdown. There certainly appears to be an association of violent impact with beauty, hence a pulchritudinous person can be described not only as “striking” but also “a knockout” or “a bombshell”.
While certainly not justification, one of the vectors of examination in the current-era study of rape psychology studies the high number of incidents in which the offender feels assaulted by the allure (or rather the concurrent feelings of desire and rejection) brought on by the attractiveness of the victim (or of another, less accessible person for which the victim is a surrogate target) so the association between attraction and impact seems to have psychological origins.
PS: the smitten mitten is, indeed, cheesy, but fairly cheap for the amount of cheese. I think a puffy leg-warmer would do the trick just as well, if not better. How else would one comfortably exchange long protein strands in the cold of winter?
What is the difference between saying, "I am smitten with him" and "I am smitten by him"? Is the first saying I am struck emotionally by him, and the second saying I am struck literally? Or am I totally off? I've tried looking this up, but to no avail. I appreciate it!!
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