Grit, gritty, grotty
“Grit” is a popular term these days. Just in case you were curious, it comes from the Anglo-Saxon greót, meaning grit, sand, dust, or earth. Anglo-Saxon is famous for its small vocabulary (which it makes up for with tortuous grammar). Not that I know much Anglo-Saxon, mind you; I just remember the word from when I was teaching a course on warriors and gave my students “The Battle of Maldon” in the original and two translations: the phrase god on greót (“good [man fallen] on the ground”) stuck in my head. In modern English, while the physical meaning of “grit” has narrowed, its metaphorical use has blossomed. The use of “grit” for strength of character, pluckiness or perseverance goes back to nineteenth-century American slang, though of course it was John Wayne who made the term really popular. It’s maybe this association that makes me feel a bit iffy about the use of “grit” in positive psychology. I don’t have anything against either of the True Grit films, but I wonder if people are unnecessarily loading cowboy connotations onto what is basically just persistence.
A long time ago, when I was teaching t’ai chi, one of my students asked me what you needed to get good at it, and I answered, “Nothing much, just persistence.” Grit, in the gritting-your-teeth sense, is something you don’t actually want in t’ai chi. You just keep practising the form calmly, day in, day out. But I’m also finding that true for more strenuous activities. Pumping iron seems as far from the grace and softness of t’ai chi as you get, but I love both, and I’m finding that gentle persistence works best for me in weight training too. I do classic barbell routines with five sets of five repetitions. When I can do them easily, I increase the weight a little, then work up to 5x5 with that weight, and so on. No grunting and groaning, no gritting of teeth, no torn muscles. I just get a little bit stronger.
Of course grit means more than persistence; it means persistence in the face of adversity, and there are times when you need to go into beast mode. On the whole, though, I find relaxed persistence works better than gritty persistence.
Hmm, that adjective didn’t look quite right. When we’re speaking literally, “gritty” is simply the adjective of “grit”, as in “It had a gritty texture.” When we’re speaking metaphorically, it morphs into something else. I got curious about “gritty” after seeing it used to describe a lot of fantasy and science fiction, so had a quick look at its history. Originally, of course, it just meant “having grit in it”. “They sopped that gritty bread in the wine that was made of very old Lees” is an example of a negative food review from 1671. When first applied to literature it wasn’t exactly complimentary either; J.C. Morrison writes in 1882, “Alternate pages of extract and comment — generally rather dull and gritty.” The sense of dealing with harsh truths took longer to catch on; the first entry in the OED dates from 1890, but this looks like a case of personal invention rather general use. We see a gradual rise in overall use of the word throughout the early 20th century, a dip around 1960, then a steep climb to the present, and my guess is most of that is being applied to novels, films and TV shows.
“Gritty” has become a way of advertising a product. It has the sense of realism (and is often paired with that word) but also retains some of its Anglo-Saxon connotations of dust or dirt. Here are just a few of my favourite TV series that have been described as “gritty”:
- The Borgias
- The Tudors
- Black Sails
- Jessica Jones
- Firefly
- Dark Matter
- Penny Dreadful
- Game of Thrones
So we have, in this completely arbitrary sample, three costume dramas, a comic book adaptation, two space operas, an urban fantasy and an epic that looks like rivalling The Lord of the Rings in popularity. It’s realism without the reality. I’m not saying the word “gritty” has departed completely from contemporary reality (Breaking Bad is frequently described as “gritty”); I just find it interesting that it’s used for things that are as removed from this as historical fiction (stuff that could have happened but probably didn’t) science fiction (stuff that could happen but probably won’t) and fantasy (stuff that couldn’t ever happen).
In the last case, I think we can see a progression toward greater grit. The problem with fantasy is getting readers to suspend disbelief. Early fantasy tended to do this by copying the style of previous epics (making it rather indigestible); Tolkien was revolutionary in mixing his epic literature in with a more modern, novelistic style (elves and aristocratic humans have archaic speech, while hobbits talk like twentieth century English villagers, and the general narrative is not that far from a 1930s novel). But Tolkien is still not gritty in the way G.R.R. Martin is. While as there as many horrific events and horrible people in Middle Earth as in Westeros, Tolkien does not dwell on them in the loving way Martin does. Despicable characters like Gollum and Wormtongue are there to provide contrast to the heroes, while in Martin’s novels, despicable is the norm.
While I enjoy a bit of grittiness, I worry that it may become a clichéd way to avoid clichés. Game of Thrones remains wonderful, but I suspect it will spawn as many cheesy imitations as The Lord of the Rings, with high fantasy bombast being replaced by lashings of torture and incest, with grubby peasants galore. Ursula Le Guin described SF and fantasy authors as “realists of a larger reality,” not a grimier reality. Too much gritty can be just grotty.
Ah, grotty. As someone who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, I love the slang of that era; for example, I would dearly love to replace the overused “awesome” with “fab”. The word “grotty” took our school by storm; suddenly anything substandard was grotty, and we giggled at Keats’ “elfin grot”. (The relation is tenuous — “grotty” comes from “grotesque”, while “grot” is short for “grotto”, though both come from mediaeval Italian grotta.) Another look at Ngram shows its use in books continuing to rise until 2000, which is odd given that I don’t recall hearing it so much after the ’80s.
Interestingly, Ngram also notes no difference between UK and US English, while I’d assumed it was a British thing; I don’t know why, but it just sounds like the kind of slang Brits would come up with. Maybe I’m getting it mixed up with “naff”, which I’m told is definitely a Britishism. I’ll restrain myself from going into that one though. Well, for now, at least.
