Babe. Sweetcheeks. Snookums. Buttercup. Pumpkin. There is an unspoken rule that allows us to cringe over sweet nothings when they’re not directed at us. On the face of it, most are quite harmless: “darling”, “love”, and even “babe” have been affectionately and unoffensively swapped for years. But others are unforgivable, such as those based on high-calorie foods: “muffin”, “cupcake”, “honeybun”, and “sugar pie”. The ick factor grinds up a gear with the infantilising sweet nothings: “baby girl”, “puppy”, and even “booboo bear”. So what might you call your partner, bae, boo, or significant other that won’t make the rest of us squirm?
This Valentine’s Day I’m reminded that, for all its depths, our language still has a few significant holes. Most of them can be filled by filching from another language. Words like Kummerspeck, for example, or “grief bacon”: the Germans’ way of describing the bit of flab gained from comfort eating after a break-up. And we have to admire the Italians’ cavoli riscaldati, describing the doomed attempt to return to an old romance only to find that the same problems are still there. The expression translates as “reheated cabbage” – never a good idea.
But the annual Valentine kerfuffle is a reminder that we are still a long way from nailing sophisticated yet loveable endearments. Beyond the aforementioned stalwarts, what else is there? After a few hours of virtually riffling the pages of the historical dictionary, I can reveal that the answer is “quite a lot”.
Among the 98 synonyms for “darling” in the Historical Thesaurus of English you will find some surprising candidates. “Darling” itself, originally “dearling”, is recorded as far back as the 9th century, and has “dear” at its heart. During this period, sweethearts might also be swapping such endearments as “light of my eye”, “my life”, and the enduring “love”. Another, “apple of my eye”, reflected the belief at the time that the pupil of the eye was a solid, spherical body.
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By the 14th century, “sweet” and “oning” had come along, the latter representing the idea of the “only one”. “Popelot”, used by Chaucer and later described in The Ladies’ Dictionary of 1694 as “a puppet or young wench”, introduced the theme of the “doll” that continues to play out today.
The 16th and 17th centuries saw an explosion of affectionate monikers. Few of them would be appreciated today: they include for example “bagpudding”, literally a pudding boiled in a bag, but somehow once used with affection. Similarly, “bully” was once a term of endearment for either sex, and was often used as an informal title in a person’s name, hence Shakespeare’s Bully Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From there the term moved to mean “a fine fellow” among male friends, before deteriorating altogether to embrace the self-admiring braggart we loathe today.
It’s unlikely that any of us would instinctively reach for “sucket”, either, even though it fits neatly into the sugary theme that’s also behind “honey”, “bun”, and “sweetheart”. But while we can get our heads around sweetness, other food choices are more puzzling. “Cabbage” was one favourite: the Oxford English Dictionary‘s first record of this, from 1722, reads “Ha! My little cabbage sprout! One sweet kiss to make it up, and I’ll be gone”. Mutual cabbage-loving is clearly a rarer thing these days. Meanwhile, “I suspect you’re a saucy young prawn, Emma”, is one character’s offering in an 18th century novel.
Indeed, taste is a pretty dominant theme in our linguistic loving up. Beyond cabbages and prawns, you’ll find “cinnamon”, “crumpets”, “lamb-chops”, “munchkins”, and even “tart” (whose trajectory thereafter, as we know, was mostly downhill). The majority of these were reserved for women, who also attracted such flowery endearments as “rosebud”, “honeysuckle”, “periwinkle”, and “primrose”.
Animals feature very high on the endearment list: “duckling”, “dove”, “ladybird” and “chuck” have been sealed with a kiss for centuries. More disconcerting for us today would be “pussy”, a staple term of endearment in the 16th century.
Staying with creature-based sweet nothings, “pigsney” was a 14th-century source of delight. Rather than referring to a pig’s knee, the word curiously likens a beloved to a pig’s eye. In the same century, one might also have come across “hogling”, defined in the dictionary as “an affectionate term for a hog”. Perhaps that one is best left alone.
Endearments are of course not just swapped between sweethearts. Friendship and parenthood also require them. Among the storehouse of male-friend-to-male-friend monikers you can find “bollock” – once used by one man to another in the same way as they might choose “mate” – as well as “prick”, “bawcock”, and “pilicock”. All of these were the predecessors of “wotcher cock”, which appeared four hundred years later.
As so often, English has proved me wrong: there are no gaps in the loving lexicon, we just need to look to the past. Should you want to stand out from the crowd this Valentine’s, “ladybird” and “sweetling” might do the trick. On the other hand, a card emblazoned with “Be My Bagpudding” might not go the way you intended.
Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. She has appeared in ‘Dictionary Corner’ on Countdown since 1992, and co-hosts with Gyles Brandreth the podcast Something Rhymes with Purple.