Vital Sparks: Do you feel the smart?

In part one of this series, we looked at how the meanings of the words pitiful, awful, bowels, and conversation have drifted over the centuries, resulting in possible misunderstandings or even humor. In this article, we will look at a few more examples.

To begin with, I will discuss two grammatical examples (discussing grammar, of course, is a way to become popular, as we all know). The first came up in a discussion about a small change in the third printing of the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp, in which the following change was made to 161 SOUTHMINSTER in the second verse:

Hallelujah we sing
To the heaven’s high King

to:

Hallelujah we sing
To the heavens’ high King

Do you see it? The possessive apostrophe was moved in the word “heaven’s” to “heavens’.” This doesn’t result in a change in what we sing (that is, they sound alike). The thinking behind this change, I believe, is that the poem is referring to the high King of the heavens, not the high King of heaven — a slight semantic difference, perhaps, in that “heaven” refers to the abode of God, the angels, and the saints who have “gone on before,”, but “the heavens” refers to not only that but also to the skies and the celestial cosmos. In modern standard English, “heaven” doesn’t take a “the,” unlike (say) “the earth” and “the moon.” When I say, “modern standard English,” I don’t mean “correct English” necessarily, but what you might find in a style guide, such as The Chicago Manual of Style, which is the style guide used for the 2025 edition.

However, this wasn’t always the case, as Robert Vaughn pointed out to me. The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, from the early seventeenth century, is full of examples of “the heaven” where today we would write “the heavens.” We can start with the very first verse: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Most modern translations use “the heavens.” It’s not clear to me when the translators of the KJV used “the heaven,” “heaven,” or “the heavens,” but they use all of these forms.

The second grammatical shift is from a song no longer in the 2025 edition: William Billings’s ROSE OF SHARON. It was pointed out to me by Timothy Morton.

Stay me with flagons,
Comfort me with apples,
For I am sick of love.

“Sick of love,” here means “sick because of love,” not “I am weary of love.” It is found twice in the King James Version, once directly quoted in Billings’s anthem (Song of Songs 2:5) and again in 5:8:

I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him,
that I am sick of love.

Timothy also pointed me to “feel the smart” in 296 SARDINIA and 430 ARBACOOCHEE. I wonder if “feel the smart,” meaning to feel pain, seems unnatural to a modern ear? I suppose so!

Behold the love, the generous love
That holy David shows;
Behold his kind compassion move
For his afflicted foes!
When they are sick, his soul complains
And seems to feel the smart;
The spirit of the gospel reigns,
And melts his pious heart.

To finish up, here’s a list of some other words that have undergone some kind of semantic drift. I’m sure there are more!

I’ve enjoyed thinking about this semantic changes, both large and small. I hope you have, too! As always, let me know your thoughts and corrections.