"How is that a haunting question? Of course they would."

Said Freeman Hunt, reacting to the headline "Neil deGrasse Tyson Has A Haunting Question About Bears,"* blogged here yesterday.

I said, "The word 'haunt' is way overused. I should do a post about that." So this is that post.

The first thing I see is that 14 years ago, in the early months of this blog, I wrote a substantial post about the word "haunted" and the way it is overused.**

Next, I see that the verb "to haunt" did not begin as a powerful, ghost-related word. It simply referred to frequency and habit, such as going to a particular place. The OED has very old quotes — as old as the 13th century — that speak of ships haunting harbors and people haunting taverns.

In the 16th century, there was talk of thoughts, memories, and feelings that frequently occurred and thus "haunted" a person. Shakespeare wrote: "Your beauty which did haunt me in my sleepe: To vndertake the death of all the world" ("Richard III" 1597). And Shakespeare used the word to speak of the habitual visits of ghosts:

1597 Shakespeare Richard II iii. ii. 154 Some haunted by the ghosts they haue deposed.
1600 Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream iii. i. 99 O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. Pray masters: fly masters: helpe.

Reading the OED makes the word feel much weaker to me. A "haunting question" is nothing more than a question that keeps coming back to you, not necessarily anything spooky. Is it no different from a "nagging question"?

But I see ghosts in "haunting." Are there horses in "nagging"? No, "nag" (the verb) comes from Scandinavia — "nagga" — to gnaw, irritate, grumble. "Nag" the horse comes from Dutch — "negge" —  a small horse. Oh! And I see that in this horse lineage, "nag" was once a slang word for "penis":

1598 J. Marston Scourge of Villanie B2 Hence lewd nags away, Goe read each poast,..Then to Priapus gardens.
1655 Mercurius Fumigosus xxxvi. 284 He by his Eloquence Converted her Gleab into pasture, and put his Nagg to grasse in her Coppice.
1707 in H. Playford Wit & Mirth (new ed.) III. 56 What is this so stiff and warm... 'Tis Ball my Nag he will do you no harm.

Goe read each poast... that's what I always say.
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* Freeman Hunt continued, riffing on deGrasse Tyson's tweet, "If Bears were in charge, after they hunted us to near-extinction, I wonder if they’d invent a candy called Gummy Human":

If bears were in charge, they'd all drive huge, gas-guzzling SUVs.

If bears were in charge, ceilings would be higher, manicurists would be in high demand, and outerwear sales would be down. There would be no need for a fat acceptance movement among bears.

If bears were in charge, the fiscal year would begin in the spring and end in the fall.

If bears were in charge, some sports, like football, would be better, but others, like basketball, would be worse.

If bears were in charge, fishing shows would get higher ratings.

If bears were in charge, raw food wouldn't be a special diet.

If bears were in charge, Canada would be a more important country.

If bears were in charge, all-you-can-eat buffets would only be open in summer.

If bears were in charge, bald animals would be considered cuddly.

If bears were in charge, smart people would live in deserts and swamps.

If bears were in charge, gummy people would be berry flavored.

If bears were in charge, yogurt containers would be honey containers.

If bears were in charge, elevators would have higher weight limits.

If bears were in charge, grizzlies would be deplorables.

If bears were in charge, police would have to handle exponentially more maulings.

** Here it is: "Haunted":

I read some of the reader opinions at the link for the novel in the previous post. You always have to wonder, reading those things, whether they are written by friends or relatives of the author (though the book really did sound good as described on the radio).

Ever notice how often a book is called "haunting"? Two out of eight customer reviews at that link called the book "haunting." It seems any time people actually like a book, they are haunted by it. That's rather disturbing. You wouldn't read the book at all if you knew you weren't going to like it. But then you like it and it dogs you in some eerie, scary way.

"Haunt" ought to be a strong word. My favorite use of the word is in the movie Wuthering Heights, when Laurence Olivier says "Haunt me, Cathy!" He doesn't mean he'd like a poignant memory of her to linger. He really means he wants her ghost to haunt him.

...I know that ghosts have wandered on the Earth. Be with me always. Take any form. Drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this dark alone where I cannot find you. I cannot live without my life. I cannot die without my soul.

That's haunt. I love that movie scene, but let me give you the original Emily Bronte text too:

"Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!"

The screenplay stayed pretty close to the original. Replacing "Oh, God! it is unutterable!" was the sheer presence of Laurence Olivier. "Dark alone" replaced "abyss," which they couldn't trust people to understand. "I can not live without my life!"--that's great movie-talk, straight out of the original. The second "I cannot live" in the original became "I cannot die" in the screenplay. Interesting! Instead of parallelism and repetition, the movie has Cathy's death create a dilemma: "I cannot live" and "I cannot die." That's quite good. (Quality screenwriting by Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, and (uncredited) John Huston.)

But I know it's futile to inform the world that they ought to preserve the strength of the word "haunt." The sad thing about taking a strong word and using it as an ordinary word is that as an ordinary word it becomes a cliché, so it really has lost its entire reason for being. A whole category of words that have had their strong meaning sucked out of them by overuse consists of words that express approval: grand, great, magnificent, marvelous, awesome. A subcategory consists of words that originally suggested unreality: fantastic, incredible, unreal, fabulous. Fortunately, there are so many of these words of praise in English, that we can fend off the cliché problem by periodically switching to a new one. I remember when no one used "awesome," then it got started, then it got overused, and then it became generally recognized that it was idiotic to say it, even as a joke. So maybe it will lie fallow for a long time and become reusable. There's no chance of "haunting" going through that process though, because though it is overused, it's certainly not overused the way "awesome" was. It's got to be quite conspicuous before people become embarrassed. On the other hand, since "haunting" is overused by people who seem to want to appear elegant and educated, maybe there is some hope that embarrassment will set in more easily.