To Be Beside Onself

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Peter from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Hi, Peter. Welcome.

What’s up?

Well, I’ve got a phrase that’s been bugging me for more than years, actually decades. It’s being beside myself when people say that. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. And I’ve even looked it up, and it’s the definition or the expression itself. It means to have a different emotion. And apparently back in the day it used to be a good thing, but nowadays it pretty much seems to me that you’re really angry or something.

When you are beside yourself, what are you like?

If I was to use that, you mean if I use the expression?

Yeah.

If I was to use the expression, I would use it in the context of being really upset, angry, mortified, just not a good feeling.

Yeah.

Does it feel like the usual you? Is this ordinary behavior for you?

No, it’s not.

Okay.

So that’s getting at the crux of what the beside is doing in there. Because the beside is what’s throwing you, right?

Yeah, it really is. It seems like I’m having a different body or something.

Having an out-of-body experience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There it is. Exactly. That’s the merging of it.

So what’s happening here is we’re talking about a beside that had another meaning. You probably guessed that. Deep inside, you knew that beside didn’t mean the same beside that we know today. In this expression, it means outside or away from. So it’s you kind of having an out-of-body experience like Martha said. So you’re actually acting in a way that is very extraordinary for you, unusual for you. It’s the idea of being away from your true self. You’re not being you. You are on the road to leaving your senses or losing your mind.

So I’m watching myself become something else.

Yeah, kind of. It’s even similar to some of the older ideas of ecstasy, which is also about being displaced mentally.

Oh, that’s interesting.

So it’s just an old obsolete meaning of beside. It dates to the 1400s. It doesn’t matter very much. But what’s interesting about it, it came into English from a translation of the Aeneid from the 1400s through French, which is probably why that expression exists as it does. A lot of people read this translation by William Caxton. He translated it from the French where the expression is hors de soi, O-H-O-R-S-D-E-S-O-I, literally outside of oneself. And we borrowed this into English, and probably because it’s one single translation, it became a thing in English.

That’s fascinating. I had no idea that it was that old.

It’s kind of dated now, wouldn’t you say, Martha?

It’s kind of, I would say archaic, but it’s got a flavor to it of maybe literary flavor to it or a writerly flavor to it.

Yeah, I suppose so. I think of somebody older saying, I was beside myself. Now that you mention it, I’ve seen it more in writing where I was reading some older novels from the 19th and 18th centuries.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Yeah, and I don’t necessarily think of it as negative so much as just astonished, you know?

Okay.

But it just basically means that you’re having a different emotion than what you would typically have.

Yeah, an extreme one, one so extreme that you’re out of your own self.

Yeah, I want to elaborate on that. You can be beside yourself with happiness or joy or surprise.

Okay.

Well, that’s fascinating.

So we figured that out for you?

Yeah.

Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

Our pleasure, Peter.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks, Peter.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

You do find that when you’re reading those classic texts, maybe decide to give Dickens a chance one more time or Jane Austen is on the bedside table and there’s those old expressions that are vaguely familiar, but the modern brain doesn’t quite click on it.

Not quite.

Not quite.

But it’s close enough to reality.

Yeah.

You think, oh, yeah. But you know, the 15th time you glide over that expression, you go look it up. Because you’re like, oh, right. I can’t just keep guessing on this. I need to find out for sure.

Right, right.

And this is the place where you find out for sure. It is indeed the place where you can find out answers to all your linguistic questions, or at least most of them. Call us, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.