Meaning & Analysis
The phrase literally refers to the act of inhaling powdered tobacco, or snuff, through the nose. This action often causes a physical reaction of irritation, such as a sniff or a sneeze.
Insights
Taking Offense
To become offended, annoyed, or angry. The physical irritation caused by inhaling snuff is used as a metaphor for an emotional irritation or a fit of temper.
Misinterpretation and Resentment
To interpret a remark or action in the worst possible way, leading to resentment. It suggests an over-sensitivity or a readiness to perceive insults.
Hasty Displeasure
To react with sudden, sharp, and often disproportionate displeasure to a situation, similar to the abrupt physical reaction of sneezing from snuff.
Historical Context of Snuff
The act of inhaling snuff, a common practice from the 16th century onward, often caused a sudden, sharp reaction like a sneeze or a sniff of displeasure. This physical irritation provided a vivid and widely understood metaphor for taking offense or becoming suddenly annoyed.
Shakespearean Wordplay
Shakespeare masterfully uses the phrase with a double meaning. 'Snuff' also referred to the burnt wick of a candle. In 'Love's Labour's Lost', the line 'You'll mar the light by taking it in snuff' puns on both getting angry and extinguishing a candle by trimming its wick, showcasing the phrase's rich literary potential.
Psychology of Offense
The proverb captures the psychological tendency of being quick to anger or overly sensitive. It implies an active choice to 'take in' an offense, suggesting a predisposition to irritation or a defensive posture where insults are readily perceived, whether intended or not.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The entire phrase is a metaphor, equating the physical irritation of inhaling snuff with the emotional state of being offended or angered.
Idiom
The phrase functions as an idiom, where the collective meaning is figurative and not deducible from the individual words. Its meaning is culturally and historically embedded.
Pun / Double Entendre
As used by Shakespeare, 'snuff' creates a pun, referring both to powdered tobacco and the wick of a candle, allowing for clever, layered meanings related to both anger and light.
Transcription
Quotations
A brute [report] went that the Pope tooke it in snuffe that this truce was made.
He that hath his beard most curiously washed in the Barbers shop, wil take no snuffe to haue it cast out into the open streets.
Boyes, fooles, and knaues, take all in snuffe.
And not by any means to crosse them, least they take snuffe in the nose, and so fall together by the eares.
Englishmen, especially being young and unexperienced, are apt to take all things in snuffe.
He took it in snuff, viz. in anger.
He took it in snuff, viz. in anger.
Jupiter took Snuff at the Contempt, and Punish'd him for't.
Shakespeare Citations
You'll mar the light by taking it in snuff.
He dares not come there for the candle; for, you see, it is already in snuff.
Who therewith angry, when it next came there, Took it in snuff.
What hath been seen, Either in snuffs and packings of the Dukes.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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