Long-suffering suffragettes still in white
A number of 鈥溾�� were noted in attendance at the recent US presidential address before Congress. Torn between trust-me blue and can鈥檛-miss-me red, many women in Congress opted for white instead. The color honors the suffragettes who campaigned for women鈥檚 right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They often did so wearing white.聽
鈥淲hite has connotations in the west of purity and virtue, this idea of being the good guy,鈥� as Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York, told last summer.聽
She was commenting on the white pantsuit Hillary Clinton wore at the Democratic National Convention.聽
These most recent political women in white were Democrats, but the original suffragettes often found Republican men more sympathetic to their cause.
In any case, having 鈥渟uffragettes鈥� in the news affords an excuse to research a question that鈥檚 nagged at me for years: What鈥檚 the connection between suffrage and suffering? Does it really hurt to vote?
Suffer came into English from the Anglo-Norman suffrir, says the Oxford English Dictionary. The word鈥檚 are sub, whose many meanings include 鈥渦nder,鈥� and ferre, meaning 鈥渢o bear.鈥�
refers to enduring pain or other kinds of distress, or to tolerating or allowing or putting up with something or someone 鈥� as in 鈥渓ong-suffering,鈥� an old-fashioned term for what we now generally call 鈥減atience.鈥澛�
And suffrage? notes, 鈥淭he meaning 鈥榩olitical right to vote鈥� in English is first found in the U.S. Constitution, 1787.鈥澛�
When suffrage came into English, in the late 14th century, it referred not to voting but to intercessory prayers or pleas on behalf of another. But there was an electoral angle here.
The Latin verb suffragari meant to lend support or to vote for someone. It seems scholars are pretty sure that Latin verb led to our modern suffrage. But they aren鈥檛 sure of its etymology.聽
There are two theories. One is that the latter half of suffragari comes from fragor, meaning 鈥渃rash, din, shouts (as of approval),鈥� according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. This works if you think of suffrage as taking place in a rowdy convention hall.
The other theory, the dictionary says, is that the second part of the word is the Latin frangere, to break, as in breaking off little bits of tile to use as ballots.
By the 1820s, a suffragist was one seeking to expand the franchise for men and women in Britain, or the voting rights of free blacks in the United States.聽
By 1885, suffragists here were especially interested in votes for women, too. But suffragette emerged around 1906 to mean specifically women interested in gaining the vote themselves 鈥� as they did in time for the 1920 presidential election.聽
So the connection between suffering and suffrage isn鈥檛 much beyond that hardworking Latin 鈥渟ub.鈥� It shouldn鈥檛 hurt to vote. But it took some long-suffering suffragettes to win the right to do so.聽
