darling

   This word was in use by the tenth century and is one of the most frequently used endearments in English. It is composed of the word ‘dear’ and the suffix ‘-ling’, which converts the adjective into a noun meaning ‘a person who has the qualities of the adjective’, in this case, a person who is dear. Between lovers the term signals a delicious intimacy, perhaps best shown by a caption to a Punch cartoon of the 1890s. A young man says to his lady-friend: ‘Darling!’ ‘Yes, Darling?’ is the reply. ‘Nothing, darling,’ says the young man, ‘Only darling, darling.’

   Shakespeare does not use ‘darling’ as a vocative, and it seems to have come into use in the eighteenth century in that role. It was previously used as an adjective and to describe a ‘darling’ person or object in the third person. In Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, we learn that Squire Western frequently calls his daughter his ‘little darling’. In Jane Eyre, after Mr Rochester has tormented the heroine by telling her that he is going to marry some-one else, Charlotte Brontë has him propose to Jane, be accepted by her, and bid her: ‘Good night, my darling.’ Jane forces him to wait a month to see whether he means what he says.

   He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as ‘love’ and ‘darling’ on his lips; the best words at my service were ‘provoking puppet’, ‘malicious elf’, ‘sprite’, ‘changeling’, etc.

   Darling has probably the most meaning when used by a speaker who does not easily use it. Thus Margaret Drabble writes, in A Summer Bird-Cage: ‘When he said darling to me the word hit me in the stomach: it isn’t a word he uses casually, and he said it with real intimacy.’ Soames Forsyte is equally surprised when he hears his ex-wife Irene address her son Jon as ‘darling’. She had never used the word to him, John Galsworthy says in To Let There are those speakers, however, who use ‘darling’ very easily as a friendly term to almost any woman, or in the case of female speakers, to almost any man. A London coster-monger is likely to call his female customers ‘darling’, whatever their age.

   At middle-class level, the term is especially associated with the theatre, and with a slightly affected pronunciation often rendered by novelists as dahling. Comments on the use of the word in the theatre occur fairly frequently in literary texts. Sinclair Lewis, in Bethel Merriday, says of his heroine that her producer ‘had never addressed her by any more intimate form than “Oh darling - look here, sweetest,” and in the world of the theatre, that constitutes ignoring a person.’ John Wain, in The Contenders, has: I kept telling myself that it didn’t matter that Robert and the crone called each other ‘darling’. She was on the stage, after all, or some-where near it, and theatrical people always called each other ‘darling’. Besides, for all I knew to the contrary, the word was a usual mode of address in London. J.B.Priestley, in Bright Day, writes:

   ‘Darling!’ she cried; held the scene for a moment, and then came hurrying in and kissed me. I was surprised. After twenty years in the theatrical and film worlds I am thoroughly acquainted with this Darling and kissing business, even though I don’t indulge in it myself. But this was different. Elizabeth’s ‘Darling!’ sounded as if she meant it. The kiss was real too.

   A likely reason for the use of this word amongst actors is given by Tallulah Bankhead in her autobiography, Tallulah:

   ‘Rarely was I able to catch the names of the dowagers and drinkers I met at parties, in dressing rooms, or in Bond Street. Darling has implications of affection, or, at least, friendliness. It cannot disturb the recipient. Did I try to pin the correct caption on every clown I encounter I’d make embarrassing blunders. They’re all darlings to me.

   ‘Darling’ is rarely used by a man to a man. When it happens in The Word Child, by Iris Murdoch, we are told that the speaker is ‘totally homosexual’. In St Urbain’s Horseman, by Mordecai Richler, the hero calls his brother-in-law ‘darling’ when he is pretending to be homosexual. He is called ‘you filthy bastard’, ‘you little son-of-a-bitch’, ‘you snake’, ‘sewer’, and ‘you filthy thing’ in return. Genuine homosexual usage between American men occurs again in The Front Runner, by Patricia Nell Warren. In The Face-Maker, by Richard Gordon, a young male actor says ‘Goodnight, darlings’ to a mixed group of colleagues. Gordon continues: ‘Clare looked shocked. He himself had come to learn the endearing expression was merely the equivalent of the Communists’ “Comrade” in an evershifting and commendably classless society.’ Yet another reference to theatrical usage occurs in Opening Night, by Ngaio Marsh. An actor says: ‘In the theatre we be-darling and beChristian name each other at the drop of a hat’ ‘Darlings’ can be used as a friendly plural, or an intimate one to children. Tender is the Night, by F.Scott Fitzgerald, has a girl saying ‘Goodbye, you darlings’ to friends who are a married couple.

   Other examples of friendly and intimate usage, noticed in a variety of British and American contemporary fiction, include: darling boy, darling + first name, dear darling, first name + darling, my darling, my little darling, my sweet darling girl, poor darling, you poor darling, darl (by a workingclass male speaker), darling angel, old darling. In fifty novels by British authors which were subjected to a detailed vocative count, ‘darling’ on its own occurred 372 times.