Redefining Love Quotes and Valentines Day SayingsLove has inspired many a novel, film, speech and other art forms. Quotations and sayings about love can be inspirational, humorous or even sad. Valentines Day, wedding anniversaries, birthdays and the holidays are occasions when a funny or inspiring quotations about love may come in handy. In fact, there's lots of quotes about Valentines Day in particular - a holiday that inspires cynicism among both single and married people alike. The following love quotes, Valentines Day sayings and quotations on affection will make the perfect addition to a holiday greeting card or scrapbook, among many other things.
The Origin of the Word SweetThe word sweet can be traced back to the Old English swete, an adjective that meant, "pleasing to the senses, mind or feelings". The word can be traced back to its Proto Indo European origins by *swad (Sanskrit svadu) which makes the word over five thousand years old. Sweet as TasteFor over 1500 years the word sweet has been used to describe the sense of taste in the English language. For a taste to be sweet, it is in direct opposition to bitter and sour tastes, "having or designating the pleasant flavor characteristic of sugar, honey, and many ripe fruits". Sweet food also meant any fresh food that wasn’t acidic through fermentation. Some foods that have incorporated sweet as their name include sweetbread (1565- the bread suffix coming from the Old English bræd meaning flesh), sweet and sour cooking (1723- which did not originally describe oriental food), and sweet or candy drop (1851-which was originally termed ‘sweetie’). Sweet and Other SensesSweet has been used to describe all the other human senses also. A pleasant smell such as roses or perfume from Old English could be termed as sweet, and by the late 18th century for someone to smell sweet meant that they were perfumed or scented. Sweet could also describe melodious and harmonious sound and by the early 20th century, a sweet sound (especially in jazz) meant playing at a steady tempo without improvisation. By late Middle English the weather could be described as sweet if it was considered warm or mild. And finally, sweet was adopted in the middle of the 17th century by artists to describe delicate and soft brush strokes. Sweet's Positive ConnotationsThe adjective sweet has always had the added connotations of being, "pleasing, gratifying, agreeable, and delightful". Sweet was used as a noun to mean beloved one from 1300, as something dearly loved or prized, "Thy life to me is sweet" (1590), and from the early 19th century to describe one’s own, "sweet self, sweet time". From the late 19th century sweet could be used to describe something that was easily managed or dealt with, "the engine is more responsive and sweet than its predecessor". Sweet has been adopted in Australian and New Zealand slang from the late 19th century to mean that everything is fine and in order, "She’s sweet". In the early 20th century sweet was adopted as an intensive in phrases meaning nothing at all, "sweet nothing", as well as a parting in the late evening, "sweet dreams". ConclusionThe word ‘sweet’ has therefore traveled through a semantic journey of meaning – from an adjective to describe a number of the human senses, as an intensifier, and as a general word to add positive connotation
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