To be infatuated is to be a fool. At least that’s what the Roman’s thought: infatuāre was the Latin verb ‘to make a fool of’. The prefix ‘in’ describes a sense of ‘towards’, ‘into’, or ‘against’ and the rest of the word derives from fatuus meaning ‘foolish’. The state of infatuation, then, can be described as one in which a person is overcome by unreasoning passion. Sigmund Freud said “extreme developments of being in love[…]may be described as fascination or infatuation” (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, 1922).
The first use in English print of the verb ‘to infatuate’ was used in a biblical context. William Tyndale, the English scholar who translated the Bible directly from Greek and Hebrew texts, wrote: “God hath infatuated your high subtle wisdom”. Here, the verb has the sense of ‘to reduce to foolishness’ (Works, pg. 234, 1533).
In 1621, English scholar Robert Burton used the verb ‘to infatuate’ in a more earthly context in The Anatomy of Melancholy when he wrote: “Those two maine plagues..of humane kind, Wine & Women, which haue infatuated and besotted Myriades of people”(Pg.160 ).
By 1816, it seems that women were still making fools of men, as the main character Emma Woodhouse, in Jane Austen’s classic novel Emma, indulged in her infatuation with matchmaking people who were not necessarily infatuated with each other. Even Emma is infatuation with her friend Harriet Smith seems misguided as Mr. Knightly declares: “Emma, your infatuation about that girl blinds you” (pg. 126).
During the 19th century, several synonyms for infatuation came into the English language, especially in the sense of ‘youthful infatuation’.
The US slang term ‘crush’ appeared in 1884 to describe the sense of being enamored with another person: ‘to get a crush on someone’. I. M. Rittenhouse in Maud (1939) wrote: “Wintie is weeping because her crush is gone”.
Youthful infatuation
‘Puppy love’ also appears in print to describe youthful infatuation when J. Neal writes: After all that I have heard you say of ‘puppy love’, and childish marriages..you were ashamed to tell me, that you were drifting to the same precipice”. A poupée doll was a mannequin used to display clothing, hats or wigs and first appeared in English in the mid 18th Century. A woman’s plaything was a lap dog in this era, which became known as a puppy. So being in love with your plaything became ‘puppy love’.
Predating these synonyms, however, came the term ‘calf-love’, which described romantic attachments between a boy and a girl.
In Sylvia’s Lovers (1863, pg.104) Elizabeth Gaskell writes: “It’s a girl’s fancy—Just a kind o’ calf-love—let it go by”. Perhaps this derives from the term ‘calf’ used in Shakespeare’s era, which was used to describe someone who was stupid, but it was also as a term of endearment: “How now (you wanton Calfe) Art thou my Calfe?” (Winter’s Tale, i. ii. 128, 1623)
It seems, then, as if the problem of infatuation has been plaguing us for generations. Still, a little infatuation never hurt anyone (unless you consider that the term ‘bunny boiler’ was born as a result of Glenn Close’s infatuation with Michael Douglas in the 1980’s classic movie Fatal Attraction). To be a fool for love is engrained in our DNA and many of us can enjoy the consequences of that from time to time.