A brief history of English disgust

Abstract

Generally, researchers assume that the experience of disgust is universal, shared by all humans at all times. It is under this assumption that much of the growing field of the history of disgust studies operates. However, no single concept of disgust exists. For example, while many believe that the causes of disgust are universal, others do not. Others have noted that the English word ‘disgust’ does not have identical equivalents in other languages, pointing to no single, shared concept of disgust. This article looks more closely at that last idea, noting that the word ‘disgust’ did not take on its current usage until the mid-eighteenth century. Beginning with an exploration of modern understandings of disgust, the paper charts the development of the modern English concept of the feeling. It argues that rather than being a universal emotion, the modern concept of disgust began when the word was used by early eighteenth-century taste theorists to describe a feeling of anti-taste – an extreme reaction to the opposite of beauty. Even then, this disgust was somewhat different from modern disgust, with deeper links to displeasure and horror than modern notions of the feeling. The main point of the article is the suggestion that historians of emotion research what look like modern emotions in the past, particularly disgust, that they ought to be cautious. Even if modern feelings appear to apply to historical events and ideas, a more in-depth look will often reveal a more complex era-dependant experience somewhat different from the modern concept.