Meaning
To evoke deep sympathy, tenderness, pity or compassion, as if the emotions were strings attached to the heart that could be tugged. It is nearly always said of something deliberately affecting - a film, an advert, a charity appeal, a sob story - and often carries a hint of accusation, implying that the audience's compassion is being played like an instrument. Almost always plural and figurative; the verb varies (tug, pull, pluck, tear, play), with tug at the heartstrings the most common fixed form - already catalogued as its own entry on this site, with the present entry covering the pull family. Often faintly cynical, suggesting the audience's sympathy is being manipulated. Regional use: International English.
Origin
Heartstring is a native English compound, and the OED's factsheet gives earliest evidence from before 1425, in the writing of H. Daniel; Merriam-Webster's first known use is the fifteenth century, in the now-obsolete anatomical sense of a nerve once believed to sustain the heart - medieval anatomy's tissues and vessels then believed to hold the heart in place and guide the emotions, a name that survives in the chordae tendineae, the real cords that anchor the heart's valves. Shakespeare used the word repeatedly - 'Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings' (Othello), 'Harp on it still shall I till heart-strings break' (Richard III), and the Lucrece line - while this site's tug at the heartstrings entry already carries the modern tug form. Debunked: the oft-repeated claim that Shakespeare wrote 'twitch the strings' fails - the word twitch never appears in the canon - and pluck the heart-strings does not appear in Milton's poems.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a tug on the heartstrings
- play on the heartstrings
- tear at the heartstrings
Usage Examples
- The charity's advert pulls on the heartstrings with slow-motion footage of shelter dogs.
- Say what you like about the film, it knows exactly how to tug at the heartstrings.
- The speech was crafted to pluck the heartstrings of undecided voters.