Mitten: It's a Verb Too!

One of the great joys of working at Rauner is the pleasure of unexpected discoveries. You're looking into a person or event when you stumble across something entirely unrelated that proves fascinating in its own right. That's what happened not long ago as our staff researched Thomas Flint, Jr., Dartmouth Class of 1880, whose notebook Rauner recently added to our collections. Our archivist, intending to learn more about Flint, instead found herself delving into an entirely unfamiliar practice: "mittening."

Wait, how'd that happen? Well, Rauner maintains a collection of the class reports, class histories, and reunion books of each graduating class. It was while thumbing through the "Freshman History" of Flint's Class of 1880 that our intrepid archivist came across the following: "A certain young lady of Hanover was heard to remark, 'I have mittened Service, Jake, the Quarter, and in fact I have mittened nearly half the Freshman class.' That is hard on Balaam, for they do say that next to studying he hates women above all things. She didn't mitten Jake the night he walked her home away from the Senior." 

Having never seen "mitten" used as a verb, our archivist was intrigued. "Mittening" seemed to relate to courting practices, but its exact meaning remained unclear. Luckily, another source at Rauner provided a useful clue. In the poem "To Phyllis" (from the volume Echoes from the Sabine Farm), Eugene Field wrote the following:

"Hoc docet (as you must agree)
‘Tis meet that Phyllis should discover
A wisdom in preferring me,
And mittening every other lover."

Mittening, then, meant the opposite of desiring a lover–it meant rejecting them. So the "certain young lady of Hanover" who bragged about mittening half the freshmen in the Class of 1880 was trumpeting the number of men whose overtures she had denied.

But why did mittens, of all things, signify rejection? The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1897) enlightens us: "To get the mitten, to receive only the mitten, instead of the hand; be refused as a lover" (p. 3805).

Thoroughly delighted by this unexpected etymological excursion, our archivist returned to the original subject of her research.

If you're interested in Thomas Flint's notebook, which has rules relating to senior societies at Dartmouth, request Codex 003539 online and then stop by!