Wearing your heart on your sleeve

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on July 25, 2009 at 21:21

In Reply to: Wearing your heart on your sleeve posted by Roses on July 14, 2009 at 20:30:

: This site lists the origin of "wearing your heart on your sleeve" as William Shakespeare, but I've read elsewhere that it was a custom to write the name of your true love on the inside of your cuff and roll them up at Valentine's to gauge the reaction. Anyone heard that or similar?

Whether or not any such custom existed anywhere in the 19th or 20th centuries, it has no bearing on the origin of this phrase which is from Shakespeare's Othello, as the "Meanings and origins" list states.

However, I think the list entry is wrong in stating that it comes from the custom of knights wearing their lady's favour on their sleeves when jousting. It is far more likely that it comes from the late medieval and Renaissance custom of lords giving their retainers cloth badges to sew on to their sleeves. In the late Middle Ages the badge you wore on your sleeve displayed to the world whose man you were and where your loyalties lay. (VSD)