Having a crush can be one of the most exciting things you experience as a teen. It can put a little pep in your step, give you a boost of those feel-good hormones, and help you awaken feelings that may have been dormant. But sometimes your crush goes unrequited, and it can leave you feeling, well, crushed.
The word crush, in the most common sense of the word, describes a feeling of overwhelming admiration or intense attraction for someone that you don’t have a relationship with. It’s a form of infatuation that can be either romantic or platonic, and it usually comes when you least expect it. It can be hard to control, and it’s often misunderstood. The term has even made its way into pop culture, becoming a verb that is often used to describe the feeling of being obsessive about someone.
When it comes to relationships, having a crush is usually not a good thing. It can cause you to act irrationally, such as being jealous of your friend’s new guy or girlfriend. It can also lead to insecurity, which can make you doubt your own self-worth. But when a crush is unrequited, it can be the most painful and disappointing thing you ever experience.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), there are 15 meanings listed for the verb crush. Two of these are labelled obsolete, and the other 13 are still in current use. This is because crush can be both a noun and a verb, depending on the context in which it is used.
In the OED’s entry for crush, there are several quotes that illustrate its use as a noun and a verb. The most famous is probably the OED’s citation of an 1884 journal entry by Isabella Maud Rittenhouse, where she talks about her crush on a fellow student. The OED also cites several slang usages of the word, including the expression “on the mash” and its related meaning of head over heels in love, as well as the slang for a male who is able to seduce women with a crafty glance or smooth line of conversation: a masher.
In an open-ended survey that asked participants to report both positive and negative outcomes of their crush, many people in committed intimate relationships cited moral concerns that the feelings they felt for their crush represented some sort of betrayal or unfaithfulness to their primary partners. Other negative emotions included awkwardness, frustration, and nuisance. Some of the most common positive outcomes reported were contentment with maintaining friendly or flirtatious interactions with their crush and fantasizing privately about sexual or romantic involvement with them. For a few of the respondents, however, these desires were not fulfilled and their crushes went unrequited.