The Language of Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is much more than a holiday: it's a cultural package. There are special Valentine's traditions, Valentine's colors, and Valentine's knick-knacks, gifts, and cards. There is also a "Valentine's Day language", i.e. a subset of vocabulary used a lot in the weeks preceding and culminating on February 14th.

Here is a sampler of the language of Valentine's Day along with its linguistic baggage.

arrow: The arrow that pierces the valentine's loving heart derives from the same Indo-European root that gave us arcus, the Latin word for bow (cf. English arc and arch). In the Germanic languages, however, the word developed the meaning of "that which belongs to the bow", i.e. the arrow. The Modern English arrow derives directly from the Old Norse root *arw- .

chocolate: Scrumptious, sinful, endorphin-releasing chocolate derives from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs: the Nahuatl xocolatl meant "bitter water" (from xococ "bitter" and atl "water"). As a result, at first, chocolate meant "chocolate drink", but now the word is applied to solid chocolate as well.

Cupid: The name of the winged Roman god of sexual desire derives from the Latin verb cupere (= to desire). Related forms in several Indo-European languages mean "to be agitated", "to steam", "to boil", which suggests, appropriately enough, that steamy agitation underlies erotic love. The English verb covet also derives from the Latin cupere.

heart: The heart, the protagonist of Valentine's Day, belongs to a widespread family of words that share the Indo-European root *kerd- as their ancestor. From *kerd- come the Greek kardia (cf. English cardiac and cardiology) and the Latin cor (cf. English cordial, concord, and courage). The Modern English heart derives from the Germanic descendant *kherton.

love: Valentine's Day is all about love, in its vast range of associations and expressions. Equally vast is the lexical offspring of the Indo-European root *leubh- from which the word love derives. The lexical descendants of *leubh- include words for "love" (English love, German Liebe, Latin libido), but also words signifying "praise" (German Lob) and "belief" (German glauben, English believe). The Old English lovely originally meant "lovable", but in the late 13th century it started to mean "beautiful", and this is how it is used today.

Lupercalia: Valentine's Day is believed to have descended from the ancient Roman festival of the Lupercalia, held on February 13th through 15th. The name of the celebration means "wolf festival" (from Latin lupus, wolf) because it was observed in honor of the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. Originally a fertility ritual, the Lupercalia eventually became a lovers' holiday.

romance: What is romance? Here is a question that has puzzled many an ardent valentine, especially when the sense of romance has to translate into an appropriate gift. Well, from an etymological point of view, a romance is just a story written in the language of Rome. Not in Latin (latine), mind you, but romanice, i.e. in a local (French) vernacular descended from Latin. So how do we get from Roman to romantic in the modern sense? Quite easily, if we stop to think that a lot of medieval stories written in Latinate vernaculars were about maidens in distress and valiant knights-errant and all sorts of adventures and chivalric feats. Now, isn't that romantic?

Source:

Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.m-w.com