It’s the little things!

I just realized why the Spanish verb “gustar” makes sense for “to like”. Our word disgust must come from the Spanish “disgustar,” which means “to upset” or “to displease.” It’s kind of strange that we don’t also have the verb gust. As in, etymology gusts me, which my little brother absolutely can’t stand. 

Furthermore, the form of the english verb disgust follows the Spanish form. In Spanish, you’d say “me gusta tus ojos” for “I like your eyes.” Most beginning students of Spanish, I think (based on my own experience), find this construction weird, as it literally means “your eyes are pleasing to me”. “Ojos” are the subject here, not “I” or “Yo” as it would be in English. However, I never noticed that when we use disgust, the “disgusting” object is often the subject of the sentence, and the person feeling the emotion is the sentence’s object. For example, the-amount-of-time-I’ve-spent-on-this-post-when-I-should-definitely-be-doing-this-other-thing-that-I-am-actually-supposed-to-do disgusts me.