Meaning
To charm or overwhelm someone so completely that they fall suddenly and deeply in love; by extension, to carry anyone away with sudden enthusiasm or emotion. The dominant modern sense is romantic: Cambridge defines it as making someone become suddenly and completely in love with you. Usually romantic in modern use, but the older general sense of overwhelming with enthusiasm survives (sweeping audiences off their feet). Very frequent in the passive: 'swept off her feet'. The Maugham, Mansfield and Day quotations were all verified verbatim in session. Regional use: Widespread in British and American English; common throughout the English-speaking world.
Origin
The literal image is of water, wind or a blow knocking a person off their feet, extended early to being emotionally overthrown. Christine Ammer's Dictionary of Cliches, quoted in The Free Dictionary, says the metaphor - 'also put as to carry someone off his feet' - dates from the nineteenth century, though it prints no nineteenth-century example; its cited quotation is Clarence Day's The Crow's Nest (1921): 'You can't sweep other people off their feet if you can't be swept off your own.' Figurative uses were already routine in fiction of the 1910s: Maugham's Of Human Bondage (1915) has Philip wanting 'to be swept off his feet and borne powerless in a mighty rush'. Wiktionary's earliest citation is Katherine Mansfield's story 'Je ne parle pas francais', written February 1918 and published in Bliss and Other Stories (1920): 'I was overcome! I was swept off my feet!' Bob Dylan's 'You're a Big Girl Now' (1975) - 'It nearly swept me off-a my feet' - shows the phrase still building songs a half-century on.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- be swept off one's feet
- carry someone off his feet
- sweep her off her feet
Usage Examples
- He was determined to sweep her off her feet, so he arrived with flowers and two tickets to Rome.
- Do not expect to be swept off your feet on a first date; sometimes love grows slowly.
- The young tenor swept the entire opera house off its feet on opening night.