MEANING

 

The phrase to have a béguin for means to be infatuated with, to have a fancy for.

 

ORIGIN

 

The phrase to have a béguin for is a loan translation from French avoir un béguin pour, of same meaning.

In the sense of infatuation, fancy, the French noun béguin was probably derived from the verb s’embéguiner de, meaning: to become infatuated with, to take a fancy to.

Interestingly, the literal meaning of the French verb s’embéguiner de is: to put on a béguin, i.e., to put on a bonnet.

In the sense of bonnet, the French noun béguin was derived from Béguine, designating a Beguine, i.e., a member of a Catholic lay sisterhood, formed in the Low Countries in the 12^th century, and not bound by vows. The French noun béguin originally designated the kind of bonnet worn by Beguines.

Therefore, from meaning, literally: to put on a bonnet, the verb s’embéguiner de came to mean, figuratively: to put a sudden capricious idea into one’s head.

—Cf. the English phrase to have a bee in one’s bonnet, which means to be preoccupied or obsessed with something, and is a metonymic transformation of the earlier one’s head full of bees.

 

EARLY OCCURRENCES

 

The earliest occurrences of the phrase to have a béguin for that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:

1-: From The Pall Mall Gazette (London, England) of Monday 12^th February 1900 [Vol. 70, No. 10,881, page 8, column 3]—Gabrielle Réjane (née Gabrielle Charlotte Réju – 1856-1920) was a French actress:

FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY AT THE PARIS VAUDEVILLE.
RÉJANE SCORES ANOTHER TRIUMPH.
[FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

Paris, Friday.—Réjane scored another triumph last night at the Vaudeville in “Le Béguin,” a clever and daring comedy by Pierre Wolff. Béguin has one meaning in the dictionary and another in the slang of the boulevard. It is the latter that is of importance in the present instance. To have a béguin for anybody is to be “sweet on” a person of the opposite sex, while the further idea is conveyed that the feeling is somewhat of the nature of a passing caprice. Yvonne Derive, the heroine of Pierre Wolff’s play, confesses to herself that she has a béguin for Henri Didier, a chance acquaintance to whom she has just been introduced.

2-: From The Moon and Sixpence (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1919), by the British novelist, short-story writer and playwright William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) [Chapter 51, page 268]—the following takes place in Tahiti, in French Polynesia:

Tiaré paused to take breath.
“It was then he told me of his wife in England. ‘My poor Strickland,’ I said to him, ‘they’ve all got a wife somewhere; that is generally why they come to the islands. Ata is a sensible girl, and she doesn’t expect any ceremony before the Mayor. She’s a Protestant, and you know they don’t look upon these things like the Catholics.’
“Then he said: ‘But what does Ata say to it?’ ‘It appears that she has a béguin for you,’ I said. ‘She’s willing if you are. Shall I call her?’”

3-: From a review of a concert given by the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra—review by Jeanne Redman, published in The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California, USA) of Friday 30^th May 1919 [Part 3: Sports, Motoring, Filmland, Drama, page 4, column 5]—Adolf Tandler (1875-1953) was a conductor of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra:

Sibelius is a success of Adolph Tandler’s, who has a “beguin” for the Finnish composer.

4-: From Recollections of Réjane: Notes on the Art of the Great French Actress, by the British poet, critic, translator and magazine editor Arthur Symons (1865-1945), published in Vanity Fair (New York: Condé Nast Publications, Inc.) of April 1922 [Vol. 18, No. 2, page 116, column 3]:

In Zaza, a play made for Réjane by two playwrights who had set themselves humbly to a task, the task of fitting her with a part, she is seen doing Sapho over again, with a difference. Zaza is a vulgar woman, a woman without instruction or experience; she has not known poets and been the model of a great sculptor; she comes straight from the boards of a café-concert to the kept woman’s house in the country. She has caught her lover vulgarly, to win a bet; and so, to the end, you realize that she is, well, a woman who would do that. She has no depth of passion, none of Sapho’s roots in the earth; she has a “beguin” for Dufresne, she will drop everything else for it, such as it is, and she is capable of good, hearty suffering.

Note: Recollections of Réjane was reprinted in Dramatis Personæ (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1923), a collection of essays by Arthur Symons.

5-: From the column Scene On Broadway, by Justin Gilbert, published in the Bergen Evening Record (Hackensack, New Jersey, USA) of Monday 9^th January 1939 [Vol. 44, No. 182, page 17, column 1]—Cole Porter (1891-1964) was a U.S. composer and lyricist of musical comedies:

Mr. Porter, composer of sophisticated ditties, has just turned out a catchy piece called “Begin the Beguine” . . . . Now, you go to your dictionary and look up that last-named word. . . . You’ll find under the word Beguine a reference to a religious order. . . . Surely Porter wasn’t writing about that. . . . But immediately preceding it is the word “beguin” which, according to the dictionary, means a fondness or a liking. . . . In the words of Somerset Maugham, “the girl has a beguin for him” . . . meaning she has a liking for the chap in question. . . . Beguine or beguin? . . . We can only guess.

6-: From the column The Town Crier, published in The Atlanta Journal (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) of Monday 19^th November 1945 [Vol. 63, No. 267, page 3, column 2]—the Okefenokee Swamp is located in southeastern Georgia, USA:

FAMED OKEFENOKEE’S flowers were not born to blush unseen, if Dr. W. B. Baker, professor of biochemistry at Emory University, has anything to say about it.
Dr. Baker has a genuine beguin for the dark Georgia swamp and its mystery creatures in both plant and animal life.