“Why settle for content when you can
be happy”
Said the hero to the heroin of a
historical romance novel I read a few months ago.
I can’t remember the name of the novel as I was on a historical binge and
read a lot of them.
For some time now this phrase has
been bothering me since I could not distinguish the difference between the two
words which lead me on a mission to find out exactly why the hero thinks being
content is a lesser state than being happy.
Since then, I’ve employed the help
of a few dictionaries to help me on my quest to find out the difference between
the two meanings. These dictionaries
are the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary and the Dictionary of Word
Origins respectively.
“Happy”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
- : feeling pleasure and enjoyment because of your life, situation, etc.
- : showing or causing feelings of pleasure and enjoyment
- : Pleased or glad about a particular situation, event, etc
Oxford Dictionary:
- : feeling or showing pleasure; pleased
- : giving or causing pleasure
Dictionary
of Word Origins:
The old and Middle English word for happy was what in modern English has become silly. This began to change its meaning around the 15th century, and obviously an opportunity began to open up for and adjective expressing “contentment” (as opposed to positive ‘joy’, denoted then by glad, fain, and joyful). The gap was partly filled by a weakening in the meaning of glad, but waiting in the wings was happy, a derivative of the noun hap ‘chance or luck’ (source of happen), which when it was coined in the 14th century meant ‘lucky, fortunate, prosperous.’ The main modern sense‘highly pleased or contented’ developed in the early 16th century.
“Content”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
- : pleased and satisfied: not needing more
Oxford Dictionary
Dictionary of Word Origins:
The adjective ‘content’ comes via Old French and reflects a metaphorical change in the Latin past participle from ‘contained’ via ‘restrained’ and ‘self-restrained’ to ‘satisfied.’
Based on
the above definitions it would show that being happy is a feeling while content is a state. As
feelings pass and change continuously I would think that being in a state of contentment, i.e. satisfied with what one has, is a much better 'state' to be in.
That’s
my opinion anyway.
