ABSTRACT
The arbitrary distinctions drawn between feelings, emotions, affections, passions, and sentiments make it difficult to untangle the 19th-century use of key emotion words. The discourses on emotions contain more than just six key emotion words so that an analysis of such terms as benevolence, pity, pride, or love, would be equally valid and relevant to over-all topic. The influence of physiological and materialist accounts of the emotions required a word encompassing the aspect of ‘sensation’, inherent in the word feeling. The physical aspect, also present in other emotion words, plays a significant part because it is the basis for the association between emotion and disease. The more specific psychological meaning of the term emotion seems to be, a rare occurrence, a 19th-century ‘invention’ and can be found mainly in 19th-century scientific texts. The psychological meaning of an emotion word often overlaps with its medical or physiological meaning, thus linking the emotions and the body.
