Hug

Hug

In celebration of National Hugging Day (who knew?), January 21, here are some thoughts on the word hug.

The verb hug first showed up in written English in 1560 – four years before Shakespeare’s birth – as hugge. Etymologists aren’t 100% certain where it came from, but some possibilities include:

Old Norse – hugga – to comfort (from hugr which interestingly meant courage)

German – hegen – to foster or cherish (from a term meaning to enclose with a hedge)

Proto-Germanic – hugjan – to think or consider

Gothic – hugs (adj) – of the mind, soul, or thought

Hug didn’t venture into its identity as a noun until 1610, when it applied to a hold in the sport of wrestling. By 1650, wrestlers shared it with the rest of the English-speaking world & hug came to mean an affectionate embrace.

Translations of the word hug are also somewhat intriguing. The English word embrace is evident in the Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, & Romanian words for hug: abrazo, abraccio, abraço & îmbrăţişare. In French the word is étreinte, in Finnish, hali, & in German, umarmung. In Samoan the word is opoopo. In Swedish & Danish, it’s kram. 

Here’s a hope that National Hugging Day gets appropriately celebrated, even by those who don’t even know it exists (or those who are instead celebrating National Squirrel Day, which is another post entirely). Dear followers, spread around some heartfelt umarmungs, opoopos and krams. Mid-hug, focus on comforting, considering, & cherishing. Afterward, keep that consideration in your mind, soul, & thought.

Any comments about hugs, their grandmother words or their distant cousins from other languages? Please leave them in the comment section.

My thanks go out to this week’s sources, etymonline.com, askdefine.com, the OED, & GB Milner’s Samoan Dictionary, published jointly but the governments of Western & American Samoa, 1966.