Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Sweets to the sweet


Queen:
[Scattering flowers] Sweets to the sweet, farewell!

I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife:

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,

And not have strew'd thy grave.


--- HAMLET, Act 5, Scene 1; the queen to the dead Ophelia.

Imagine my dismay when I learned in high school that the phrase "sweets to the sweet" didn't carry the romantic notion I thought it did. First, it referred not to chocolates, but to flowers; and second, well, there was a grave in the picture, not a lovely garden or boudoir. It's about a suicide, not a betrothal.

Nasty.

Maybe that's why I don't use the word very often, unless I'm being sarcastic.

If you hear me say, "Oh, how sweet," I really mean something is cloying and unbearably saccharine.

For GenY, sweet means "good deal" or "ok, I'm there." It's hard to keep up, though, and that may have changed since I asked my GenY nieces and nephews last week.

As far as I'm concerned, the only really sweet things are in bakeries. Or at miniatures shows such as the one I attended this weekend. Here's a table full of half-inch pies.



Now that's sweet.

I hate to ruin a perfectly fine word, but it's not my fault, it's Shakespeare's.

But that doesn't mean there's no sweet contest here! You can win a sweet treat by commenting on what the word means to you!

6 comments:

Betty Hechtman said...

Those little pies are adorable. I think of sweet as meaning thoughtful.

Betty Hechtman said...

Those little pies are adorable. I think of sweet as meaning thoughtful.

Camille Minichino said...

Thoughtful is the best meaning of the word!

Ellen said...

"Sweet" involves glucose, sucrose, puppies,and kittens.

Camille Minichino said...

Would those kittens be shaken or stirred Ellen?

signlady217 said...

I work with teenagers a lot, so "sweet" usually means awesome.

And those little pies look good enough to eat! (Although they are so tiny they look like they came from Lilliput!)