Today’s word of the day, courtesy of the Word Guru, sort of, is enamor. Enamor is a transitive verb (one that takes a direct object) that means “to fill or inflame with love (usually used in the passive and followed by of or sometimes with )” or “to charm or captivate (usually used in the passive and followed by of , with , or sometimes by )” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/enamor).

You probably know the difference between an active voice and a passive voice construction, but just in case, let me explain. English is what linguists call an S-V-O language. In other words, the normal word order in English is Subject-Verb-Object. Of course, this order applies only to transitive, active voice verbs because intransitive verbs do not take an object. So such an English sentence would look like “Martella hit Antonio,” where Martella is the subject, hit is the transitive, active voice verb, and Antonio is the direct object. But what if we are more interested in Antonio than we are in Martella. We can make Antonio the subject of the sentence, but making the direct object the subject means that we have to change the voice of the verb from active to passive. To make a passive voice construction, we have to use some form of the verb to be before a part of speech called a past participle. In the case of regular verbs, the past participle will look just like the past tense, ending –d or –ed. In the case of irregular verbs, the past participle might look a little different, as in sing, sang, sung, where sang is the past tense and sung is the past participle.

The implication of the definitions of enamor is that, while it is a transitive verb, we rarely talk about the person doing the enamoring except in a prepositional phrase designating agency. We usually put the person who is the object of the enamoring in the subject position and make it a passive voice verb: “Jasmine was enamored by (or with) Orestes.” There are not a lot of English verbs that are used almost exclusively in the passive voice.

It entered the English language “c. 1300, from Old French enamorer ‘to fall in love with; to inspire love’ (12c., Modern French enamourer), from en- ‘in, into’ (see en-) + amor ‘love,’ from amare ‘to love’ (see Amy). Since earliest appearance in English, it has been used chiefly in the past participle (enamored) and with of or with” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/enamor#etymonline_v_8625).

According to On This Day, on this date in 1726, “Three men arrested during a February raid on Mother Clap’s molly-house (a coffee house catering to homosexuals) in London are executed by hanging at Tyburn, England” (https://www.onthisday.com/events/may/9).

Margaret “Mother” Clap had a house in Field Lane, Holborn, Middlesex, which is today part of the West End of London. Between 1724 and 1726, her house served as a coffee house for homosexual men. Since one slang term for such men at the time was molly, which has a couple different possible origins.

Molly is a diminutive of the proper name Moll, which was often used generically for a low-class woman or a prostitute. It may then have been extended to effeminate men or male homosexuals. The other possibility is that it derived from the Latin “mollis ‘soft,’ which also had been used classically in a specific pejorative sense in reference to men, ‘soft, effeminate, unmanly, weak,’ in Cicero, Livy, etc. A 1629 publication from the Catholic-Protestant theological disputes, ‘Truth’s triumph ouer Trent,’ written in English with swerves into Latin, at one point describes the denizens of Hell as fideles fornicarios, adulteros, molles, and so forth, and molles is translated parenthetically in the text as ‘effeminate’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=molly). The website continues, “Molly House as a term for a brothel frequented by gay men is attested in a court case from 1726” (ibid.). That court case is most likely the case of Mother Clap’s coffee house.

The research on this story can be found in Mother Clap’s Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England, 1700-1830 by Rictor Norton. The house was raided in 1726, and about 40 men were arrested. The wiki about Mother Clap says, “In February 1726, Margaret Clap’s molly house was raided by the police; around 40 of its occupants were arrested.^[2] Primarily targeted by the Society for the Reformation of Manners, the house had been under surveillance for two years” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Clap). But it wasn’t anything like what you’d think of based upon that sentence. There was no police in the early 18^th century. Criminal apprehensions and prosecutions were handled by private parties. Yes, there were sheriffs, but they were more like administrators than what we think of as sheriffs today.

Homosexual relations between men was illegal in England in the 18^th century and beyond. Oscar Wilde was sent to prison for sodomy in 1895, and Alan Turing’s 1952 conviction for sodomy caused him to commit suicide. But Margaret Clap supported the men who supported her establishment. According to the wiki, which is based upon Norton’s research, her coffee house was not a brothel like other molly houses. Clap had one man who lived in her house for two years, and for another man, she perjured herself in order to help him escape a charge of sodomy. Sadly, she was not able to help the three men who were executed for being enamored of other men.

By the way, in September of 2001, at the Royal National Theater in England, Mother Clap’s Molly House by Mark Ravenhill was first produced, a black comedy that takes place partly in the 18^th century and partly in the 21^st.

There is also a Molly House bar and restaurant in Manchester, England. I’ve never been, but the menu looks inviting. Today’s picture is from a review site (https://www.quandoo.co.uk/place/the-molly-house-28981/menu).