Comfort, the Acceptable Face of Luxury: An Eighteenth-Century Cultural Etymology

Abstract

The use of the term "comfort" to refer to material well-being developed in the eighteenth century, from the expressions "creature comforts" and "comforts of life". The word always retained its traditional meaning of assistance and consolation, so that middle-class writers and novelists felt they were justified in presenting it as part of the ideal way of life. A comfortable life-style was also considered as characteristic of the English constitution and so evidence of Englishness itself, as a study of the introduction of the term into France indicates.

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