Burning Ears: An Ancient Superstition
The idea that your ears get hot when you are the subject of conversation goes back a very long way
Are your ears burning? If they are, it is presumably because someone, somewhere, is talking about you! At least, that is the belief held by some, although “old wives tale” would surely be nearer the truth!
The superstition — for it is nothing more than that — only applies when the talking is being done way out of earshot — it is not the case that you suspect that you are the subject of discussion between people on the other side of the room but can’t quite hear what they are saying.
Blame it on Pliny …
It might surprise you to learn that this notion owes its existence to the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who wrote during the first century AD and was a victim of the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD. Pliny set out to write down as much knowledge — about everything — as he could gather, producing 37 volumes of his “Natural History”. It was his insatiable curiosity that prompted him to get too close to Vesuvius.
In Book 28 of Natural History Pliny wrote a collection of commonly held superstitions, and he managed to find and record around 20,000 of them. Somewhere on the list…
