The four-letter word lust

Years ago, I wrote about our four-letter words, and the comments were, as could be expected, numerous. Incidentally, the origin of those words is nether too interesting nor (in at least one case) too complicated. Lust is not l*** or l**t, and one can speak about it, without hurting anyone’s sensibilities. The hitch is that the history of this word is far from clear.

Here are some basic facts. Lust (perhaps surprisingly) is an ancient non-borrowed noun. It occurred in all the oldest Germanic languages and had practically the same form and meaning everywhere. It turned up even in the fourth-century Gothic translation of the New Testament, in which lustus rendered Greek epithumía “desire.” Unlustus “dislike,” the opposite of lustus, also occurred in that translation. A few Modern English words contain the root of lust, but their ties with lust are no longer felt, the more so as they are hopelessly obsolete. Such are list “pleasure, desire” and to list “to be pleasing”. Only listless “apathetic, dispirited” has survived. By contrast, German lustig “merry” is still a conversational word, along with the noun Lust “desire, joy.” The same can be said about the Scandinavian cognates (losti, lysta, and others). Only Icelandic elska “to love,” if it belongs here, adds an interesting detail to the list above. (Compare what I said about love in the post on free two weeks ago.)

The origin of lust, to use a formulaic phrase, remains a matter of debate. People long, yearn, and strive for many things, and all kinds of metaphors underlie those words. A metaphor has also been searched for lust, but I will mention it later. First of all, etymologists noticed a few words outside Germanic that sound like lust and mean approximately the same. The first of them is Latin las-cīvus, which found a safe haven in English lascivious “lewd” or, according to a more pompous definition, “inclined or inciting to lust.” Amazingly close is the Russian noun laska “caress” (almost the same form elsewhere in Slavic).

A common Indo-European root las– “to be greedy, lascivious” seems to underlie all those forms. This “root” may have existed, but we of course want to know why such a combination of sounds conveyed the meaning ascribed to it. An old etymology connected lust with words for “bowing, bending” (then lustful would emerge as “having a certain inclination”). Even English little may belong to this group. However, those words are themselves of undiscovered origin and can throw no light on another obscure corner of our ancient vocabulary.

In principle, this result need not surprise us. As mentioned more than once in this blog, only sound–imitative words have a transparent origin. Ga-ga, shoo, pop, and crush ~ crash pose few or no problems. Sound symbolism is in the eye of the beholder, but it is still a factor to be reckoned with. According to a bold suggestion, all those l-st ~ l-sk nouns and verbs are indeed sound-symbolic. We may add license to the words, mentioned above, and refer to the authority of the great French historical linguist Antoine Meillet, who called Greek lilaíomai, Gothic lustus, Sanskrit lásati, and Slavic lask- expressive and belonging originally to unbuttoned, informal speech. Given this reconstruction, we have no need to look for some ancient root, but even if Meillet’s guess is acceptable, it is not immediately clear why l + some vowel + s suggested to the speakers of a huge continent the idea of desire, caressing, and unrestricted sexual freedom. I have never seen this hypothesis discussed, but Meillet’s name justifies our attention.

By contrast, another etymology of lust, allegedly explaining why, how, and where all such words came into being is known very well. I am now returning to the idea of a metaphor. The German linguist Jost Trier always looked for the origin of words in the labor activities of ancient people (in principle, an attitude worthy of unquestionable support). It is his fixation on a single factor that arouses suspicion. One of his favorite themes was the role of saplings, more precisely, of what may be called “coppice” in English. The German word Niederwald, occurring in Trier’s works, refers to a growth of young trees. He reconstructed the old root leus–a (as seen also in English lose) and offered the following scenario. Allegedly, this root denoted the leaves of trees, cut down in spring. Animals, he explained, are especially fond of such leaves, and from the animals’ leaning for and consumption of them our word, denoting “desire,” sprang up. Trier even derived the placename Lustenau from this source and supported his conclusions by explorations of ancient myths. He devoted two books to the Niederwald.

Trier’s reconstruction attracted both admirers and denigrators. The admirers followed him unconditionally. One of them was his lifelong friend Jan de Vries, an outstanding etymologist and expert in Old Germanic literature and mythology (especially Scandinavian), who, unfortunately, tended to worship a chosen idol, be it in politics or scholarship. But even Elmar Seebold, the latest editor of Kluge’s German etymological dictionary, found Trier’s hypothesis worthy of discussion, even though he balked at endorsing it, and Alfred Bammesberger, a leading expert in the etymology of Old English, found Trier’s idea acceptable.

Nobody harms an imaginative scholar more than the students who lack the talent of their teacher but blindly defend and develop even such of his theses that should be taken as hypotheses and treated with caution. Trier did not avoid this danger (and, most probably, encouraged his “school,” as one can judge by some dissertations he advised). Both he and his advisees have been exposed to ruthless criticism, sometimes justified, sometimes too harsh. Reading Trier is a joy. Following him blindly is dangerous.

By way of postscript, it may be mentioned, that lust has also been compared with German los “free from,” allied to the English suffix less and the archaic English word leasing “lying, falsehood.” Gothic laus and Old Icelandic lauss mean “empty.” Both lose and loose are kindred words. Apparently, we are told that lust means letting oneself “go loose.” Here again, I am not aware of anyone’s comments on this suggestion. Does it sound too simple and therefore not worthy of discussion? Scholars like convoluted and imaginative hypotheses. One also wonders whether the multiple Indo-European cognates of lust also find a good explanation in the reference to –less and its kin.   As already stated, specialists have not reached a consensus on the origin of the word lust. Those who will turn to the most reliable dictionaries, including the OED, will not discover a definite answer. Even suggestions are usually missing. My opinion on this subject does not matter, but if I were pressed, I’d rather stay away from Trier’s hypothesis and treat with some interest Meillet’s idea of the expressive nature of lust and the words related to it. Lust and all kinds of desire need expressive words for naming them. One only wonders why the sound complex l-s evoked such wild associations.

_{Featured image: Drunken satyr. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC-BY-2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.}