This seems to be the place to ask this question. Where did this expression come from? Besides being impossible it is odd that such an expression Ever came into being. I know what it is saying, but why?
I don’t really know the answer to your question. But interestingly enough there’s a similar expression in Swedish "utom sig", which literally translates as "outside oneself" and is used in the same way as the English expression, though generally only in its negative sense.
I suppose the idea in each case is that you’re so angry that something takes over that is separate from yourself. Personally, I never get that angry, of course. ;D
Thank you for the welcome. I didn’t realize that anger was the cause. This instances I’ve heard it used in were more of a discombooberation kind of thing. In other words, I was so upset by the traffic accident I was beside myself. I had a feeling it meant something like clinical shock?
yes, I knew what it meant, but have no idea where it came from, I wrote:
"Where did this expression come from? Besides being impossible it is odd that such an expression Ever came into being. I know what it is saying, but why? "
Milestone, I was not pointing out the meaning… I was showing that Greek language shared this expression.
ecstasy - 1382, "in a frenzy or stupor, fearful, excited," from O.Fr. extasie, from L.L. extasis, from Gk. ekstasis "trance, distraction," from existanai "displace," also "drive out of one’s mind" (existanai phrenon), from ek "out" + histanai "to place, cause to stand." Used by 17c. mystical writers for "a state of rapture that stupefied the body while the soul contemplated divine things," which probably helped the meaning shift to "exalted state of good feeling" (1620). Slang use for the drug 3,4-methylendioxymethamphetamine dates from 1985. Ecstatic "rapturously happy" is from 1664.
"Beside" was formerly (15th through 19th centuries) used in phrases to mean "out of a mental state or condition, as ‘beside one’s patience, one’s gravity, one’s wits’" (Oxford Engl. Dict.), and that use survives only in "‘beside oneself’: out of one’s wits, out of one’s senses.
"Beside himself". Why do we describe a distraught person as being ‘beside himself’? Because the ancients believed that soul and body could part and that under great emotional stress the soul would actually leave the body. When this happened a person was ‘beside himself.’ This same thought is to be found in ‘out of his mind’; and in ‘estasy’ too. ‘Ecstasy’ is from the Greek and literally means ‘to stand out of.’" From "Dictionary of Word Origins" by Jordan Almond (Carol Publishing Group, Secaucus, N.J., 1998)
Interesting… So this use, which appears to be an ‘original’ use, of the preposition beside is closer in meaning to the close kin, besides. Does anyone else get that impression?
The word besides seems to me to have another meaning entirely. While beside is the preposition meaning "next to" or "adjacent to", besides appears to be synonymous with "in addition to" or "furthermore".
Hee hee! My friend told me a funny story several years ago concerning this phrase that I have told and re-told, I just love it so much. She was talking to this guy in our grad program who was from - I think - Vietnam, and he was engaged in a very dramatic and heated explanation of something that had happened to him. Describing his upset state of mind, with furrowed brow he boldly exclaimed, "I was so mad, I was next to myself!"
Adorable, huh? I think it’s a great second language acquisition anecdote.
With the advent of cloning, it may some day be possible to be literally beside yourself. You won’t even have to be in any necessary emotional state to do it.
Identical Twins are clearly two. I agree with uncronopio, for once or twice, but even in a determinist world, just the displacement of one genetic identity with another would create a sense of individuality and seperateness!
I believe that Time travel would create the same dichotomy!
