Kiss
Most
words meaning kiss are imitative of the sound of a kiss, yet these words
don’t all sound the same. Could this reflect on the nature of kisses
in various cultures, or simply the vagaries of language?
Buss entered English in the 1560s and seems to have come from Welsh or
Gaelic, bus, meaning lip. Buss falls
in the imitative kiss-word camp. Robert Herrick clarified buss’s shades of meaning
in 1648:
“Kissing and bussing
differ both in this,
We busse our wantons, but
our wives we kisse.”
Kiss is another imitative word, with precursors in Dutch, Old High German,
Old Frisian, & Norse. My personal favorite precursor is the Old Saxon word,
kusijanan.
Imitative? Hmm. One must wonder about those old Saxons.
Osculate made its way into English in the 1650s from Latin osculari, & means little mouth. Try to say kusijanan
with a little mouth.
Snog showed up in the language in 1945 as British slang, initially meaning to flirt or cuddle, though over time snog
has come to mean kiss. Its origins are a complete mystery.
Smack is an imitative term from the late 1550s, originally meaning to make a sharp noise with the lips,
then morphing within fifty years to mean a
loud kiss.
Mwah, meaning either a kiss or an air-kiss, is another imitative term. Mwah came
to the language in 1994.
Smooch (my personal favorite), arrived in English as a verb in 1932 & a
noun in 1942, from the German schmutzen, to kiss, which most likely was born of imitation.
I
also must admit a fondness for the term Give me a little sugar, which
appeared in the script of A Raisin in
the Sun in 1959. Though I can find suggestions that this euphemism was
in use before 1959, I haven’t been able to verify any.
Do
all these different-sounding kiss words reflect cultural differences?
Class
reflections?
Vagaries
of language?
Or
are kisses & such the sort of magical things we simply shouldn’t analyze too
closely?
Good
followers, what do you think?
Sounds as if the Brits have traded "bussing" for "snogging" which still sounds like more fun than Hollywood air-kissing. Mwah, mwah, darling, love your work!
ReplyDeleteThe list will roll on and on, thankfully.
ReplyDeleteSK
HI Anne,
ReplyDeleteMwah back to you, dahling.
& Steve (or should I type SK?),
In the post I didn't mention that kissing appears to have taken the place of sniffing & licking. As to the list rolling on, who knows what's next?
I don't believe I have ever seen Mwah written out. Tried to figure out what it was then I sounded it out, imitated it and, aha! Got it! I like smooch. A little sugar is awfully sweet too!
ReplyDelete