To Crush on Someone

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Gustavo from Santiago de Chile. How are you?

Bienvenido.

Thank you, thank you.

What can we help you with, Gustavo?

Yes, it’s about this expression, to have a crush on someone.

I thought it was a fairly recent language creation,

But then some time ago I was watching this British TV serial, Downton Abbey,

And then one of the characters used that expression there,

And the story there takes place between 1912 and 1914.

So it’s about 100 years ago.

That means that the expression is even older than that,

Unless they made a mistake, which I doubt.

So my question is, when and how did this expression originate?

Boy, it’s interesting about Downton Abbey.

We’ve gotten about three different callers on the show about this

Because everybody’s really paying attention to the language on that program.

So your question is about to have a crush on, meaning to be infatuated with someone or to really be excessively fond of them in an almost unreasonable way, right?

Yeah.

A crush is the worst, though.

Correct, yeah.

You’re right.

Your instincts are good on this.

Downton Abbey is totally fine.

To have a crush on somebody is older than the period in which the show is set.

So we can find uses of to have a crush on somebody from the early 1900s.

And we can even find crush, meaning the person that you’re infatuated with,

The person that you are suddenly and quickly in love with from the 1880s.

1880s.

Yeah, there are large numbers of related terms as well.

You can have to mash on somebody.

A lot of people probably know the term mash note,

Which would be a love note that you might pass in a class.

That’s a mash note.

You could have a crash on somebody as well, not just a crush on.

You can even have a case on somebody, meaning, again, to have a crush on them.

All of these terms, I think, really are not quite onomatopoeic, but close to it.

They’re like the coup de foudre in French.

I’m going to pronounce this in terms of the lightning strike, right?

And I think it exists in Spanish as well, right?

To be struck by lightning is to have a sudden, quick infatuation or to instantly fall in love with someone.

I think they all represent that kind of collision of your eyes in this subject of beauty or this wonderful person.

And I think onomatopoeia is not quite the right word for it, Martha, right?

Well, but it’s somehow evocative that way.

There’s also the word pash.

Yeah.

That’s an old word that didn’t survive the way that crush did.

But pash, I’m pashing on someone.

I’m pashing it.

Might be short for passion, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You have to be passionate about someone.

But that shh sound.

No, it’s interesting.

It’s just kind of a crashing, crushing sound.

Yeah, but I believe it’s actually an emotional description of a collision,

A collision between personality types and characters and romance.

Yeah, I first thought it was even spelled with A, not with U.

And then, yeah, it’s amazing that it’s so old, this expression.

I never imagined that. Thank you very much, yes.

And Gustavo, do you have an idiom in Spanish, in Chilean Spanish,

For this kind of thing, besides enamorado?

Si, enamorarse is the most typical one, and then volverse loco por alguien.

To go crazy.

Yeah.

Nice.

Well, next time I have a crush on someone, I will feel much more confident now.

Sure.

Well, best of luck in life and love, Gustavo.

Thank you very much.

That was great.

Bye-bye.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I’m looking at this old newspaper from 1922 that uses the word crush in quotation marks.

Oh, nice.

It’s a little column.

And it’s so funny.

This woman is saying, why is it that girls of 16 or 17 pick out the most impossible boys of their acquaintance to fall in love with?

The more of a roughneck, that’s also in quotes, the boy is, the more of a hero he seems to be to the girls.

Honestly, one of my girls hero-worshipped a boy for weeks merely because he could play football like a demon.

He wasn’t good-looking and of intellect had merely a trance.

Yet she had him camping regularly in our parlor week after week

Where he spent most of his time talking about himself in slang and bad grammar

Before she recovered from her infatuation.

Well, all of us nice guys have always wanted to know why women go after the bad boys.

Send us your mash notes to words@waywordradio.org.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Or tell us about your lost loves on Facebook and Twitter.