What is this thing called ‘hug’?

 

(Wikimedia Commons photo by Todorov.petar.p)

Have you hugged…somebody today? (The expression began as “Have you hugged your kid today?” Now it’s gone so far as to ask, as an Etsy selection does, “Have you hugged your burrito unicorn?” Um, why?)

Thanks to a shot, or two, in the arm of a Covid-19 vaccine, many of us now feel safe using our arms to clasp, cradle and cuddle one another. No longer will expressions like “bear hug,” “bro hug” and “group hug” seem like quaint artifacts of a pre-pandemic world. Calendar note: January 21st is National Hugging Day; might as well start gearing up now.

Humans have been hugging since the 1560s—actually, far longer than that, but that’s when the meaning of wrapping your arms around someone became wrapped around the word hug. In Old Norse, people engaged in hugga, or comforting. The word evolved from hugr, which meant courage, and which is worth pondering. Old English weighed in with hogian, to care for.

The French, who like to linger over lunches and other pleasing things, stretched the pleasure of hug to the four-syllable embracier in Old French. Yes, that would be our modern “embrace.” The “brace” reaches back to the French, Latin and Greek words for arm, for the obvious reasons. Spanish makes it clear: el brazo is an arm; el abrazo is a hug.

“Hug” has its own brand of onomatopoeia. If you can sigh, you’re halfway to saying it.

And so we sigh—with relief, with unrestrained emotion, with no longer having to long to hug. We’re living high on the hug, and loving it.