I like to look up the etymologies of words in the dictionary, especially those non-Latinate words that have been in the English language for a long time, because their origins are so often rooted deeply in the body. Sarcasm, for instance, derives from the Greek sarkein, “to bite the lips in rage”; worry derives from weirgan, the Old English verb for “strangle.” Both the noun and verb for anger, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, derive from the Old Norse angr, meaning trouble or affliction. I can easily imagine the word being onomatopoetic—the gruff outburst of an ancient proto-Norseman reacting from the core of his body to some external frustration.

If you growl a few times in a row, until you feel the g and r and the slightly nasal n as one growl ends and another begins, you’ll start to hear the word form. Ngr. Anger. A tight feeling in the neck and chest where your heart pushes blood to your brain, matched with a clenched jaw.

Maybe the word predates Old Norse, and came into human language thousands when we first started turning the sounds our bodies uttered into words. And in truth the word anger has been wrapped up in the body and its emotions ever since we began our struggle to define it. 

In 1657 J. Smith wrote in Mystical Rhetoric that “Anger is a vehement heat of the minde, which brings palenesse to the countenance, burning to the eyes, and trembling to the parts of the body.” 

In 1690 John Locke wrote in Human Understanding that “Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of Mind upon receit of any Injury, with a present purpose of Revenge.” 

Both of these descriptions, among the earliest in modern English, reference the physical manifestations of a mental state; Smith’s notes the impact of that emotion on the body, and Locke on the mind’s propensity to plan vengeful action, which is imagined with the body even if not actually performed.

Anyone who has felt anger is familiar with the feelings these two 17^th-century thinkers
described; time, technology, and intellect have not pulled the word’s root from the phenomena of the body. Walk down your street angry and even children will know from twenty yards—especially a child will know, because they learn to read vibes before they learn language. They’ll sense the narrowed scope of your senses, the preoccupation of your stiff, confrontational stride, the hardening of your heart into a shell that’s unresponsive to anything outside of your own vehemently heated mind. 

Children feel anger instantly and retract from it, a habit that has no doubt been of great value to the evolution of our species and culture. I sure in hell am glad I retracted from my father's anger, and likewise I'm glad that my children retract from mine. 

The habit certainly served me well. I learned to disappear when I sensed my father’s anger—and I don’t mean simply the explosive kind that erupted and spilled out to others, but the anger of his frustration over who he was and what he had made of his life. My father inadvertently taught that you don’t have to be angry at a person or a situation, though having an object for your anger makes it a whole lot easier to justify. 

You can simply be suffused with the emotion of anger as you might be suffused with the emotions of love or contentment. You dwell in it, cultivate it, and it radiates from you. It keeps you one quick step away from lashing out, denies relaxation to the body’s muscles, keeps the mind clenched down around a vague sense of frustration, injustice, and incompleteness as if trying to turn it into a pearl.