For some reason the world at large is currently hotly debating the merits of two Bollywood “item numbers”. Clearly this is a good time to discuss the origins of the word.
“Item” comes from a Latin word meaning “similarly” or “likewise”. It was often used in enumerating the various articles in a list — in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, for example, the character Olivia provides an inventory of her features. She claims to possess: “item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth”.
At some point the word “item” began to mean a thing or article — something that might be put on a list with other things. So, for example, your grocery shop will not package items for consumption in the bag into which they place the bathroom cleaning liquid. Laptops and other electronic items must be switched off while the plane is taking off and landing. And so on.
At some point in the twentieth century the word also got linked to the concept of being an item (or story, or piece of information) in the newspapers. The gossip columns in particular used the word — and there’s nothing people like to gossip about more than romantic or sexual relationships. Are they together or aren’t they? Are they getting married? Is she pregnant? Is he jealous? And so on. This, of course, led to the use of the word “item” to refer to any unmarried couple whose relationship status was likely to be of interest.
None of this directly explains the term’s use in India, but it does shed a bit of light on things. To begin with, the whole point of including an item number in a film is that it is a box that needs to be ticked — something that is considered necessary and routine. One can imagine Olivia making a list for such a film: item, one heroine, skinny and fair; item, one noble hero; item, one villain; item, one catchy song with an attractive woman dancing to it.
From this perspective the “item number” seems congruent with its earliest usage in English, that of marking an object as part of a list. What is particularly interesting, though, is the fact that the women who these item numbers are picturised on have come to be associated with them to the point that they are themselves referred to as “item numbers”.
On the one hand, it’s probably just because a number of people don’t have a strong grasp of the English language; on the other, it’s quite a coincidence that the women who are so often objectified by these songs should be given a name that, in common usage, literally means “object”. Perhaps the strangest thing in all of this is that the definition of item most associated with the gossips columns is the one least related to the evolution of the phrase “item number” with clear consciences n
— bluelullaby@gmail.com
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