Timeline for "They were seduced" vs. "They were swayed"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Jun 22, 2014 at 18:13 | comment | added | Casey | @ColinFine Ah, OK. That makes a certain kind of sense with the "lead away" Latin etymology. Sorry. I think that my point still stands, though... "seduce" is most commonly used in the sexual context and is loaded because of that. | |
| Jun 21, 2014 at 16:17 | comment | added | Colin Fine | @emodendroket: Actually, no. The OED orders its definitions oldest first rather than trying to identify the primary current meaning. Meaning 1 is "To persuade (a vassal, servant, soldier, etc.) to desert his allegiance or service", recorded from 1477. "To induce (a woman) to surrender her chastity. Now said only of the man with whom the act of unchastity is committed (not, e.g., of a pander)" is meaning 3, recorded from c. 1560. In any case, the OP's first example clearly did not involve either of those meanings. | |
| Jun 20, 2014 at 17:46 | comment | added | Casey | I'm guessing definition 1, which was skipped, was the sexual one, which seems important to me. Without anything else, "He was swayed" and "He was seduced" mean something very different. | |
| Jun 20, 2014 at 17:46 | vote | accept | Guilherme Oderdenge | ||
| Jun 20, 2014 at 17:13 | comment | added | user56reinstatemonica8 | "Sway" needs something to sway against: for example, you could say "He had promised himself he wouldn't kiss her again - but he was swayed by her lips". I don't think seduced necessarily implies dishonest or bad decisions, but it does imply that all other factors were forgotten (which usually means the same thing!). Being swayed implies the balance of pros and cons being tipped towards doing X, while being seduced implies forgetting the pros and cons completely, and just doing X regardless. | |
| Jun 20, 2014 at 15:03 | comment | added | Dom | Great answer, not sure if I can make my answer better without duplicating this. @GuilhermeOderdenge you can use sway correctly here, if there was some inner turmoil (should I?, shouldn't I?) and her lips were the factor that swayed your final decision to kiss her. | |
| Jun 20, 2014 at 14:59 | comment | added | Magus | I might also add that sway may mean something along the lines of "caused to waver" which is recoverable. Seduced implies success - you were caused to actually do something, whereas sway does not always, in my mind, mean that you do. So @GuilhermeOderdenge's second example could still be used, though the implications are somewhat different. This seems in line with the quoted dictionary entry, which only mentions influence. | |
| Jun 20, 2014 at 13:38 | comment | added | Guilherme Oderdenge |
Good answer, Colin! Thank you. But you told "seduced" could led people to a bad choice in some sense: dishonest, disloyal, etc. So, is this a pattern? And for about the sexual context where "sway" doesn't fit, then can I discard that possibility totally? I mean, sway in the sexual path is, at all, wrong? Should I go with "seduced" to ensure cohesion?
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| Jun 20, 2014 at 13:32 | history | answered | Colin Fine | CC BY-SA 3.0 |