Talk:head over heels

RFV discussion: February 2020

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head over heels

See also: Tea_room/2020/February

Rfv-sense "hopelessly smitten" (thus the equivalent of an adjective). As far as I know, that would be a definition for head over heels in love, not head over heels alone. Both Lexico and Collins claim that head over heels is an alternative form of / synonymous with head over heels in love:

• Lexico defines "head over heels" (also "head over heels in love") thus: "Madly in love", with the following usage example: "I immediately fell head over heels for Don";
• Collins: "If you are head over heels or head over heels in love, you are very much in love", with the following usage example: "I was very attracted to men and fell head over heels many times".

I consider that a parsing mistake in both cases:

• In "I immediately fell head over heels for Don", the verb is fall for, meaning fall in love with; "head over heels" is used adverbially, and simply describes the manner in which "I" fell for Don.
• In "I was very attracted to men and fell head over heels many times", fall head over heels is synonymous with fall in love. But in love in fall in love is not an adjective: fall in love is not fall + adjectival in love (“enamoured; very fond”). Thus the sentence cannot be used to posit the equivalence "head over heels" = "in love".

I'm thus looking for unambiguous cases of adjectival use. Can you say "I am head over heels with someone"? Or maybe "I am head over heels for someone"? Or simply "I am head over heels"?

@Lambiam, Dan Polansky. Canonicalization (talk) 14:30, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Let's try google books:"was head over heels with":

• "Not to mention the young man that I was head over heels with was the jock at the school he attended. He played football and was damned good at it! I had all his certificates on my wall and was proud of it too."
• "He had already told me that he loved me. I was head over heels with him too."
• "There was no way Laura was jealous enough to kill Brandi, not when she was head over heels with Drew."
• "Not that he hated to admit it, but he was head over heels with Gracie all over again. He felt that she was the one."
• "He wanted to get married and everything. He was head over heels with me."
• "I was head-over heels with Sarah. We went places, played all games and did all things done by lovers."
• "Within days, David was head over heels with this gentle, pretty young woman whom he asked for a date."

--Dan Polansky (talk) 14:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Here are some uses: [1] [2] [3] [4]. I’d define this as short for the complete phrase “head over heels in love”. The gamut of senses “completely, hopelessly, madly, utterly” is found very often, but not exclusively, in application to infatuation.  --Lambiam 14:50, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Ok, I think all those quotes are good. Given the evidence provided here, I was wrong, and shouldn't have removed that sense peremptorily.

I think we should do those three things:

• add the quotes to the entry (I'll do that later);
• find some quotes for adverbial head over heels (“completely, hopelessly, madly, utterly”) that have nothing to do with infatuation;
• ?create an entry for head over heels in love.

Canonicalization (talk) 15:12, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I think the 'jiffy test' for including head over heels in love would or should require that common use of the longer expression predated common use of the shorter one. Eg, rain cats and dogs seems to have been common before other expressions that use cats and dogs, so we include it. DCDuring (talk) 17:10, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

But I just don't see that as a reason to add it as a separate entry. The phrase head over heels in love may have been given a special meaning, not because in love changed its meaning, but rather because head over heels extended its figurative meaning. As a result we now have head over heels in debt[5], ... in work[6], ... in temperance[7], ... in lust[8], ... in Dove[9] (an advertising pun), &c. So although head over heels in love may have been considered idiomatic at one time, examples can be found to contradict that, and I would suggest it is SOP and should be treated that way now. -Mike (talk) 05:42, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

I found one quote for the adverbial head over heels (“completely, hopelessly, madly, utterly”) that was not referring to infatuation, but that was it. I think this usage comes from the fact that one "falls" in love, and is a metaphoric use of the tumbling adverbial sense. Kiwima (talk) 19:28, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Now listed at Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English#head over heels, so let’s keep further discussion concentrated there.  --Lambiam 08:04, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

That's a different sense. The sense in RFV here is the adjectival one that does not have "in love" as its part (see the quotations above), whereas the sense in RFD is "RFD-sense: "(with in love) Hopelessly, madly, to distraction", which is a sense that really does not represent "head over heels" but rather "head over heels in love".

As for closing the present RFV, I claim that the challenged sense is cited. The next step is closing it as "RFV passed", which should be done by someone else than me. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:47, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I got confused. But why is this sense now listed as an adjective? I think we all agree that above board is a prepositional phrase. If I qualify it with an intensifier (like strictly above board, as in As far as I could tell, it was all strictly above board), does it suddenly become an adjective? Is totally in the dark (as in We were left totally in the dark) an adjective? Or hopelessly in love? If not, then why should short for head over heels in love become an adjective just by dint of having been shortened?  --Lambiam 13:45, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

RFV-passed, this is indeed cited AFAICT, as Dan says above. google books:"was head over heels and" proved a particularly useful phrase for finding more examples which seem to be this POS and sense (they have the same form as the existing Coughlin citation); I put several at Citations:head over heels. - -sche (discuss) 04:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

RFD discussion: February–March 2020

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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head over heels

See also: Tea room/2020/February and Requests for verification/English

RFD-sense: "(with in love) Hopelessly, madly, to distraction."

Sense just entered into the entry. This should be in head over heels in love, if anywhere. We do not go creating "(with dwarf) being small, relatively cool star of the main sequence" in red instead of red dwarf. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:06, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Let me note that we do have an astronomical sense at red: "Of the lower-frequency region of the (typically visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum which is relevant in the specific observation". There are no usexes or quotes, however, and I don't know if it's used in that sense in red dwarf. Some expertise would be welcome. Canonicalization (talk) 14:14, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

As an aside, I have no intention of RFDing red dwarf. Canonicalization (talk) 14:35, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Some sources: “head over heels”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., “red dwarf”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. M-W:head over heels[10] has sense 2 "very much : deeply"; if this sense can be shown to be used in combinations other than with "in love", the sense I put to RFD can be reworked and stay. Collins[11] has "completely; utterly (esp in the phrase head over heels in love)", which supports the idea of keeping the sense but reworking it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:28, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I would suggest that we combine this sense with the "At top speed, frantically" sense - they are both essentially intensifiers for verbs that relate to tumbling, falling, or lurching. Kiwima (talk) 08:57, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Some research into older uses suggests the following course of sense development. The original sense is that of a human body being turned upside-down. Most uses are in combination with the verb tumble. In 1825 we could read about someone (literally) falling head over heels, and likewise in 1839, the latter in reference to water. And in 1825 someone is seen throwing himself head over heels down a little descent. About the same time (1824, 1839) people start falling head over heels in love. Somewhat speculatively, I think this early use was meant to be a humorous variation on the usual fall in love by taking the verb fall as a metaphor for a literal falling, and then intensifying it by making the falling more dramatic than a mere dropping to the ground. And while fall in the sense “to happen” can also be gradual (as in “he fell gradually ill”), a literal falling head over heels happens in an instant, and this carried over to the metaphorical falling head over heels in love. So now head over heels, used as a metaphorical intensifier in combination with fall, signalled not only the dramatic nature, but also instantaneity. Then this became generalized as an intensifier, divorced from its initial application to falling in love, like in 1835 we read about somebody being sent head over heels out of the ranks, indicating the suddenness of the dismissal. Quite some time later, in 1863, someone else finds himself head over heels in trouble, where the intensifier now signals the completeness. Only more than a century later, head over heels starts being used as a shortened form of head over heels in love, where it remains ambiguous whether this signals the utterness or the suddenness of the infatuation (or both). TL;DR: First metaphorical use as a dramatic intensifier specifically for fall in love, then generalized with two distinguishable meanings, and more recently also used as a shorthand phrase.  --Lambiam 08:55, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Great job. The above would suggest to me that we should create head over heels in love as a precursor of the abbreviated head over heels meaning the same; as Canonicalization pointed out elsewhere, head over heels in love has some support in lemmings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:27, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Since this was nominated, the sense has been relaxed to “usually with in love”, which means that the original rationale for deletion no longer applies. I have added two more cites.  --Lambiam 14:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Delete! Oops, I was thinking that it can just mean "in love" without stating love, but that's the adjective sense that we already had, and I didn't scroll down far enough. This adverb sense adds nothing. Equinox ◑ 06:52, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The adverb which is tagged RFD-sense, which now reads "(usually with in love) Hopelessly, madly, to distraction, deeply, utterly", seems to be well attested by various citations saying "I am head over heels in trouble", "wind up head over heels in debt", "found ourselves head over heels into ritual", etc, and even one use which seems adverbial(?) after "fall" but without "in love" ("do I just fall head over heels for the last girl"), so I don't see what the basis for deleting it is anymore (it was re-written after the start of the RFD). So, keep as it stands now. - -sche (discuss) 06:56, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Keep per -sche. Canonicalization (talk) 18:19, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I've boldly untagged this and am going to say it's kept: the entry has been changed substantially since the start of the RFD, addressing the issues with it, and there is at best no consensus for deletion anymore. - -sche (discuss) 04:08, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

@-sche: You forgot to strike out the heading of the discussion. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:00, 17 March 2020 (UTC)