Crush and pash

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CRUSH, n., TO HAVE A CRUSH ON, expr. A “crush,” as in a romantic or sexual interest in someone—or the person who is the object of romantic or sexual interest—is a much older word than I would have guessed. Its first recorded use was in 1884! The expression “to have a crush on” is recorded in 1903. Both originated in US English.

I looked up “crush” because I wanted an explanation of why this is slang for liking someone, which neither the OED, nor Green’s Dictionary of Slang, nor the Online Etymology Dictionary ventured to guess. So I have hardly anything to report—except that the second citation in Green’s is gay! From the Sun, April 11, 1897:

A distinctly woman’s collegiate word is ‘crush.’ expressing a relationship between two girls hard to define. One girl, generally an underclassman, and usually a freshman, becomes much attached to another girl, ordinarily an upper-class girl.

Yes, “hard to define.” What were those girls doing? We’ll simply never know.

“Pash,” by the way, has this same definition in Green’s: “an infatuation, usu. between junior and senior pupils of girls’ schools or between a schoolgirl and a female,” where the first recorded use is 1919. The OED, defining “pash” (short for “passion”) more generally as an infatuation, puts the first recorded use in 1891. It might be that “pash” and “crush,” with similar sounds and similar meanings, influenced each other, but that’s speculation on my part.

Like crush, with its other, more violent definition, “pash” was once a blow in combat or a verb meaning to hurl something so as to smash it. We don’t say either of those much anymore. I’m very taken with these two examples of violent words used to express infatuation; having a crush is just like getting hit over the head.

It’s been months and months since I’ve read anything in French—a segment of this newsletter that used to be called Capital-R Romance—but I was tidying some old papers and a copy of Guy de Maupassant’s famous 1881 short story “Une Partie de campagne” (A Day in the Country) fell out, so obviously I reread it. It’s a marvelous little thing, a story of a bourgeois family taking a carriage out of Paris to have a day by the river, very much like an Impressionist painting. It’s funny and sharp and melancholy. In one scene, a young woman gets in a rowboat with a young man and they row into a secluded, reed-covered part of the river and hear a nightingale. Then there are paragraphs of increasingly intense, orgasmic description of the nightingale’s song. I think that flew right over my head when I read it as an 18-year-old who was thinking too hard about verb tenses.

I was going to link an English translation, but the one I found at Project Gutenberg censors the nightingale song/sex! It reads:

The girl was still crying; she was filled with strange sensations. Henri's head was on her shoulder, and suddenly he kissed her on the lips. She was surprised and angry, and, to avoid him, she stood up.

They were both very pale when they left their grassy retreat.

The French original has five paragraphs between “She was surprised and angry” and “They were both very pale.” And the young woman doesn’t stand up—she throws herself onto her back. She resists his advances and then becomes wild with desire (“affolée par un désir formidable”) and grabs him and kisses him back. And then the nightingale goes into “melodious spasms.” So anyway, this is a cautionary tale about accepting whatever out-of-copyright old translation the internet gives you for free.

But sometimes the internet gives you something lovely for free, like the Renoir painting above, sourced from Wikipedia, or this 1936 film adaptation of the story, available at Archive.org, directed by Jean Renoir (son of the artist). There's a hat in the film that looks just like the hat worn by the young woman in the foreground of the painting.

And speaking of crushes and melodious spasms, here's what I've read lately in small-r romance:

The Fling in Panama (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Liz Alden. The setting of this one was so compelling to me: Lila is an Australian backpacker who wants to go through the Panama Canal while she’s touring Central and South America, and she gets a ride on a small sailboat that doesn’t have quite enough crew members to go through without a hitchhiker (you need five people to cross the canal). One of the sailors is a handsome Norwegian named Eivind, and he convinces her to stay on for their trip to the Marquesas, a sailing voyage of twenty-five days. The sailing is exciting and beautiful, and being with the same people for such a long time is intense, so this kept me turning pages. It feels like traveling, which I always love in a book. Indie published; library ebook.

Late Bloomer (bi f/no-label f, both cis, contemporary) by Mazey Eddings. Look, this has a very cute cover, it’s pretty cute inside, the sex is hot, but if you are stressed out by a character making enormous financial decisions rashly—winning $500k in the lottery, immediately spending $300k on a flower farm she’s never seen, doesn’t talk to a single lawyer or real estate agent or even a friend first, also has no concept that a farm requires work—then this one might not be for you. If you’re fine to be like “money is not real in romance novels, and also tradespeople are available on short notice and can complete large construction projects in a single day,” which, hey, sometimes I am, then you’ll have a good time. Library ebook.

A Shore Thing (trans m/cis f, both het, heroine could be read as demisexual, historical) by Joanna Lowell. Don’t you wish you were doing a summer bike tour of Cornwall? With a beautiful eccentric lady botanist and/or a handsome rakish oil painter? This book’s slightly silly title combined with its cute illustrated cover made me think it wouldn’t be sexy, so as a public service announcement: it fucks. Kit, the trans hero, is a charming flirt, and Muriel, the cis heroine, is made of spiky determination and I love her for it. Regarding the title and cover, the book is also cute—witty, even—and the work of art it most reminded me of is The Importance of Being Earnest. Not that anybody in it is doing imposture, just that it’s witty and ambiently gay and late Victorian and everyone is a little bit silly, but in a way that makes you like them, I promise. The protagonists ride “safeties” (what we think of as regular bicycles) and the antagonists ride penny-farthings (bonus etymology: they were called this because penny coins were way larger than farthing coins, like the wheels in the bike), and it’s great. And there’s art history! I fear this review is not doing justice, so please picture me gently but firmly placing this book in your hands. You need this. Library ebook.

The Jade Temptress (m/f, both cis and het, historical) by Jeannie Lin. This is part of a series of murder-mystery romances set in Tang Dynasty China, centered around courtesans who work at (or “are indentured to”) a place called The Lotus Palace. Mingyu is the most beautiful of these courtesans, famous for her skill as a musician and as a hostess. Her previous run-in with constable Wu Kaifeng made her hate him—he tortured her!—but when she finds her patron murdered, she goes to him for help. Kaifeng is lower class, big and laconic and intimidating, and he ruffles a lot of feathers in his dogged pursuit of justice. He and Mingyu have such a complicated history, and he knows nothing good can come of his interest in her, but the murder investigation keeps throwing them together. They’re both quite guarded, so it’s a slow burn, but when they finally allow themselves to fall in love, it is sweepingly romantic. I had no idea how they would solve the last obstacle keeping them apart—Mingyu being essentially owned by the madam of The Lotus Palace and not having the funds to free herself—and when it happened, I was delighted. Really deft work with the twists in the mystery, big emotions at the end, and quite lovely prose. (I’m a chaos monster who read this series out of order, but I do intend to go back for the rest at some point. Here’s a review of Red Blossom in Snow, a later work.) Library ebook.

That's all for this time. I'll be back in your inbox on April 6.