This is the first phrase I thought of when seeing this week's word (in @calumam's excellent Word of the Week competition). It's from Shakespeare's Hamlet, in the titular character's famous "To be, or not to be..." soliloquy:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
Hamlet's life sucks, and he questions ending it all, but he stops short, realizing there is no guarantee that death would be any better.
Hamlet is using the word outrageous in a sense many will recognize: the fortune, or fate, he describes attacks him with "slings and arrows," it is something awful and hurtful to be endured. But as someone that grew up in the United States in the '80s and '90s, I can't help but see the word outrageous with more positive connotations.
Excesses and Decorum
I wanted to get a bit more context on the word as it was used in Shakespeare's time. Thankfully, there are resources like this online version of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, which provides usage quotations from important English literature of the time, and Shakespeare makes many appearances. But where's outrageous? Oh, it's spelled outragious, and according to Johnson it means:
- Violent; furious; raging; exorbitant; tumultuous; turbulent.
- Excessive; passing reason or decency.
- Enormous; atrocious.
It's this third usage that references Shakespeare, but Henry VI, not Hamlet. The Duke of Gloucester dislikes the Bishop of Winchester (I hear he has reasons), and says to him:
Think not, although in writing I preferr’d
The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes,
That therefore I have forg’d, or am not able
Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen.
No, prelate, such is thy audacious wickedness,
Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious pranks,
As very infants prattle of thy pride.
I think there's a murder attempt in there as well, but anyway, we're here for the outrageous. These crimes Gloucester speaks of are enormous and atrocious. Winchester's wickedness is audacious, bold and daring.
We can see the idea captured here: outrageous is excessive, an affront to expectations. This also fits with that period's usage of outrage, which Johnson has meaning "to commit exorbitancies" or rather, to commit excesses, to be unreasonable.
As a usage example, Johnson provides a quote from Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster, a work from 1570 "specially purposed for the private bringing up of youth in Gentlemen and Noble men's houses."
Three or four great ones in court will outrage in apparel, huge hose, monstrous hats, and garish colours.
The quote's full context is helpful here:
And in meaner matters, if three of four great ones in court will needs outrage in apparel, in huge hose, in monstrous hats, in garish colors, let the Prince proclaim, make laws, order, punish, command every gate in London daily to be watched, let all good men beside do every where what they can, surely the misorder of apparel in mean men abroad, shall never be amended, except the greatest in court will order and mend themselves first.
Well that settles it. Outrageous things go against the order of things. They are excessive and unexpected and this is bad, right?
A Quick Folk Etymology Interlude
There's some confusion regarding the provenance of the word outrage, but it's useful to remember that English is almost omnivorous in its use of loan words.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word is from the French oultrage, from the Vulgar Latin ultraticum, and can be summed up etymologically as "'the passing beyond reasonable bounds' in any sense."
The particular focus on violent or negative connotations we see in our time comes from the similarity the word has to other English words, an example of folk etymology, where unfamiliar forms—here, outrage's original source in the Romance languages—are replaced with familiar ones, in this case the English words out and rage.
Good Outrage and the Reese's NutRageous Candy Bar
Despite my research, I still can't help but hear "outrageous fortune" as positive.
I think that's partly to do with the modern usage of fortune, but say we translate that to something like outrageous CIRCUMSTANCE.
That still sounds great to me, so how do we explain what's going on?
I'll note here that many of the entries into this week's competition used outrageous in its negative sense, something unexpected and BAD.
But the era of my childhood redefined the negative connotations of the word, putting it in a modern context where excess was not necessarily bad, and shocks to one's expectations and sense of propriety were more and more commonplace, such that the unexpected was now to be expected.
How do you let kids know what to expect from your candy bar? You want them to know it's really novel and fun, and absolutely packed with peanuts. If you're a Hershey's marketing suit, you call it Acclaim. Aaron L. Brody recounts the story in Developing New Food Products for a Changing Marketplace:
The name can make a big difference. Hershey's Nutrageous bar was originally named "Acclaim" but was changed after testing because while the candy tested positively, consumers—kids—found no relevance in the name. Nutrageous is a play on "outrageous," at the time a commonly used kid's term to describe something they think is really different and "cool."
So it's all those meddling kids' fault!
English's "Outrageous Fortune"
Looking back to Ascham, we can see a centuries long linguistic trend: where he was worried about the behavior of those outraging at court, modern generations look for those behaviors and circumstances that push boundaries. Even if we narrow our view to see outrageous as "provoking our modern sense of outrage," we note that this behavior is on the rise, with provocation and the reverse, feeling provoked, both becoming a perennial Internet pastime.
I'd argue that all of this is fortunate, as a language is only as powerful as the concepts it can convey and the engagement it receives. English's power comes from its profusion of speakers and the perspectives they bring to the table.
Note that English has the most non-native speakers of any world language.
It is the primary language of the Internet.
Naturally it will exceed its boundaries, if it had any to begin with, with kids leading the way.
It's outrageous to me that outrageous made me think of a 400+ year old poem, but it's more outrageous that English still makes so much sense.
Thanks to Max Muselmann, Waldemar Brandt and Mitchell Luo on Unsplash for their lovely photos. Shout out to @calumam for the inspiration and I'll see you in the comments!
great
Here I am sitting and being educated on the philosophies of Shakespeare just because we had the word outrageous.....no offense
But quite a review and so much digging I guess
Sincerely, when I saw your title I thought you were going to deal with the negative part of outrageous as it relates to amassing a lot of wealth and fortune
Now you threw me off the scent and just wanted to highlight the positive part of it, even going to the "Candy" extent
heh, i suppose it was intentionally misleading. sorry if it was boring, but it was the process i followed when researching the word, because i'm a nerd and words are fascinating.
the candy is ridiculous but the story about the name was too good to pass up.
thanks for reading.
Oh, you are a nerd?
You don't need to tell, I can see it for myself
Yes, I agree
My pleasure
Nerds and geeks are the coolest. The coolest! Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Hell, being one feeds my family. I'll admit that I came into the article thinking one thing and then left thinking another. Not many people used outrageous on a positive note. I still wouldn't have tied it to an author like Shakespeare.
i'm definitely not upset i'm a nerd. it's all i've ever known, heh.
i couldn't shake the positive angle on the word, even when i understood the context, part of me was that '90s kid thinking, "wow, outrageous!"
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