We quite often use terms associated with oral taste in an abstract but natural way when speaking of people, describing a person as "sweet, " “sour,” or “bitter”. I think this is quite common in many languages, and may point to the feeling the OP is suggesting.
I’d always assumed the correlation between the flavor “sweet” and a “sweet person” was either because (1) the similar expression each puts on your face, or (2) our instinctive phisiology is such that as infants we will continue to eat sweet foods and avoid sour/bitter ones. The second point is probably a better explanation for “sweet person,” but I think facial expressions are the only way to explain the different connotations between a “sour” and “bitter” person. Finally, please note I’m not presuming one use predates the other, just that the two uses appear to be correlated from an early point in language.
Based on this, I guess I’m inclined toward naita’s explanation the “delicious” and “cute” are closely wired in the brain, and would further posit that other taste sensations have close affiliation with aesthetic feelings. Freud’s Oral Phase (the sexual notions aside) is a rather plausible explanation, given that taste is the primary aesthetic sensation for an infant.
I tell you this, we’re not having you over to our place when we put out the hulled sunflower seeds for the wild birds outside our window so our four cats can watch and stalk.
We can slink off together. I’m almost embarrassed how often I think “she is so cute I could just eat her up” and variations on that theme. I’m also guilty of the southernism of “give mama some yummy sugar”
Hey, she’s 10 months old and 15lbs more than she was when she was born. I revel in her plumpy, rolly, chubby little self. CITE!
Ok, the expression on your cat’s face just made me laugh until I cried.
This thread is getting MPSIMS-ish, but I am just relieved other people feel this way too. Even if there is no accepted scientific reason for it. Because if you’re too odd for the Dope, well…that means…something.
We have taken this impulse to an art form in our house. The darling yummy little arms are for nibbling like corn on the cob. Nibble, nibble, nibble, right down to the “finger food.” Then you get a big norsh of drumstick on that chubby little thigh. Roll cutester over and snack on the scrumpious baby back ribs. Smoochy-smoochy-smooch right down through the rump roast, another snorgle on the drumstick, and then down to the toe niblets. Yum, yum.
