In Bleak House, Charles Dickens is credited with the earliest known use of growlery: a private room for growling, sulking, or simply getting away from everyone. Its French cousin boudoir began with a similar mood; it comes from bouder, meaning to sulk, and originally suggested a woman’s retreat for pouting before the word acquired more romantic associations. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Growlery” and “Boudoir” Both Began as Rooms for Sulking”
In his book Bleak House, Charles Dickens coined the term growlery, which he used to mean a place to growl in, like your private sitting room, you know, the place where you just go to sulk.
It’d be grumpy.
Which is funny because the word boudoir comes from the French word that means to sulk. It was originally the place where the woman went to sort of pout.
So the growlery is the masculine version of the bourgeois.
Yeah, sort of like the man cave, I guess.
But now bourgeois has different connotations.
It does indeed.
It suggests romance.
Yes, but it goes back to this image of pouting.
When did we leave this wonderful time when we create rooms for every emotion?
I know, right?
We have the thinking room. We all know what that room is.
Yeah, I know that room.
We have this sleeping room.
The magazine room.
The magazine room, yeah.
