A few days ago, I watched the entire 5 or so hours of the A&E Pride & Prejudice (so awesome). You know how Mr. Collins is always talking about how condescending Lady Catherine is?
Granted, in truth Lady Catherine meets our current understanding of the word, but at the time, condescension wasn’t an offensive description. Quite the opposite.
In America and most of the modern world, the term condescension is quite an insult. It means that the condescending person seems to think so highly of themselves that they have to lower themselves to our level. And that’s offensive to suggest that we’re at a lower level.
But think of when there was such a thing as rank. A social system where your rank dictated what you could wear, what you could do, your power in society, how you could marry, and so on. In a social system such as that, for a powerful person to condescend to the lower level was the utmost in gentility, kindness, thoughtfulness of those in a lower status than they. Not that it could never be considered an insult- a person of equal or lower rank behaving as though they were condescending from a higher rank would be the ultimate of fools. Which is why we use it exclusively as an insult today- after all, no one is higher than anyone else now. Even the President is the servant of the people- perhaps we should condescend to him?
But the truth of the matter is, we are still impressed by those who seem to truly condescend to us, even if we don’t call it by that word. Now we say “S/he’s just like a regular person” or “They’re so normal!” or “They’re just like us” and count it a compliment. Think of all the stories you hear of someone meeting a really pleasant Hollywood star, a rock god, or famous politician? How about when you work at a company where the boss is just “one of the boys”?
Rank still exists, condescension in the original still exists, but we’ve used it so much as an insult that it can no longer be considered a compliment. It’s just a shame that unless you write historical fiction, even writers are constrained by modern society’s norms. Oh well.
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Happy New Year, Wordvixen!!!
I love finding the roots of words and phrases, it’s just so interesting to see where they come from, and how they’ve changed in meaning. I think you’re more familiar with the different connotations if you’re a history or historical fiction buff, and a lot of people can’t look past their current understanding of phrases when they read books from the past. (Thinking Huckleberry Finn is racist – the author’s meaning was the exact opposite, but he used words common during the time period)
Rank does exist – and sadly, some people assume a rank and try cramming it down our throats. I’ve had friends – FRIENDS – condescend to me in front of others. Okay, so that’s a sick, twisted person with some agenda, but don’t we often put our agendas into our actions? That’s how I think the word “condescend” got so tarnished. If it were reserved to those who were actually worthy of condescending, fine.
.-= Lori´s last blog ..Freelance or Full Time? =-.
Merry- Me too, I think etymology is fascinating. In fact, I like to listen to Beth Moore teach on the Bible, because she gets as geeky as me about things like transliteration and etymology. Did you know that supposedly the transliteration for “manna” is “what?” ? Question mark included!
Lori- Exactly. Condescension isn’t a bad thing in itself- it’s only a bad thing when it’s, er, fake. And yeah, the condescending friends thing is the most annoying situation. I tend to not stay in contact with those “friends” after a while.
Thank you so much for this explanation. I was thrown by the use of the word condescending, as it seemed in every case to imply something positive in the person’s behaviour. I am three quarters way through Pride and Prejudice, and it is my first time reading it, even though I am 50. I consider myself quite lucky to have “discovered” Jane Austen’s wonderful writing at this stage of my life, as I think the themes appeal to a mature reader quite differently from the way they do for younger readers.
Dave- I’m so glad this post was useful to you! I’m a huge fan of Jane Austen (but I admit, the A&E version of Pride & Prejudice does beat the book on a few points- I think Elizabeth Bennett’s attitude comes across so well on screen, and Colin Firth is amazing at Mr. Darcy’s intense looks) and I just wrote this post as a kind of editorial. A few years ago a freelance writer friend of mine wrote a post on how “nice” wasn’t always such a “nice” word (originally it was an offensive term for a perfectionist, but in a snobby kind of way). You’ll probably come across that a lot in your reading as well, as in “don’t be nice!”.
I thoroughly agree with you- there is so much to P&P and the rest of Jane Austen’s work that can’t be appreciated in the same way when you’re young. I’m 30 and only discovered it a year or two ago, and even now I know that I’ll be able to appreciate it more as I “grow up”.
Thank you so much for the comment!
Excellent post. There’s good deal of great information correct here, although Used to want to let you something — I’m running Redhat the actual current beta of Chrome, and the design of blog is kind of flaky for me. I can understand the actual posts, the actual navigation doesn’t work therefore nicely.