Korset

What is a korset?

Korset is the Dutch spelling of corset: a stiff boned bodice laced tight around the upper body. The Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek gives two reasons for one, aesthetic, to accentuate the waist and bust, or medical, to support the back or abdominal wall. So the Dutch word covers both. In Dutch it is het korset, plural korsetten.

Where the word korset comes from

From French, and it pushed aside an older Dutch word that then came to mean something entirely different.

The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands lines up the occurrences: corsetje “new fashionable young lady’s bodice” in 1717, corchetten, die buigzaam om het lyf spannen in 1773, and only in 1843, with Ten Kate, a “steel corset.” The word comes from French corset, a diminutive of Old French cors, upper body.

Now the nice part. In the eighteenth century the stiff, cinched thing was called a keurslijf, and a korsjet was the supple alternative. When that keurslijf went out of fashion in the French period, corset was borrowed from French again for a loose laced bodice. Within a few decades that turned just as stiff. Meanwhile keurslijf went its own way: from 1826 you read of a language “not clamped in a Latin keurslijf,” and since 1840 the word stands in the dictionary as a constraint. Anyone complaining about a keurslijf today is talking about rules.

Why people wear a korset

Because it takes over your posture and needs no instruction to do it. You sit upright because nothing else is possible, you breathe higher up, and you notice it again with every move. For the wearer the pull is in that constant reminder. For the other person it is the visible change: a torso that is still, and a silhouette that isn’t yours.

A korset forces nothing. You can get out, you can reach the lace yourself, and it does nothing to someone who feels nothing with it on.

What to watch for with a korset

Not only your breath. Your hip too.

Ryan Coffey and Vikas Gupta describe in the StatPearls chapter on meralgia paresthetica that the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve gets pinched by outside pressure from tight belts, straps or constricting clothing, right where it passes under the inguinal canal into the thigh. What you feel then is burning pain, tingling and numbness on the outer side of the thigh, usually on one side. Treatment starts with the advice to leave tight-fitting clothing off, and about 85 percent recover on their own.

In practice: if a thigh starts tingling, the lace comes loose. The lung figures are on the page about the corset.

Where this fits on my site

A korset is clothing, not bondage, and it falls under what I enjoy going along with rather than under what I bring. If you want to know what such an evening looks like when you’d like to wear one, the page about the BDSM date explains how we go over that beforehand.

Sources

• korset. Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek, Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal. Supplies the gender (het korset, plural korsetten, diminutive korsetje), the synonyms keurslijf and rijglijf (fading), the non-official variant corset, the construction (a stiff boned bodice, laced or ribboned at the back or sometimes the front) and the two functions: for aesthetic reasons, such as accentuating the waist and bust, or for medical reasons, such as supporting the back or abdominal wall. Also supplies the compound sm-korset.
• korset. Etymologiebank, hosted by the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, with the entry from the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (Philippa et al., 2003-2009). Supplies the borrowing from French corset as a diminutive of Old French cors “upper body,” the occurrences corsetje (1717), corchetten, die buigzaam om het lyf spannen (1773) and “steel corset” with Ten Kate (1843), and the history in which the stiff keurslijf of the eighteenth century fell out of use in the French period, after which corset was borrowed again for a supple laced bodice that soon turned stiff once more. The entry keurslijf supplies the figurative meaning “a set of hampering rules” with the occurrence from 1826 and the date 1840, and the entry rijglijf the Limburg form rulf and the Brabant form rellef.
• Meralgia Paresthetica. Ryan Coffey & Vikas Gupta, StatPearls Publishing, updated 1 May 2023 (NBK557735). Clinical monograph on entrapment of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve. Supplies the mechanism (outside pressure from tight belts, straps or constricting clothing on the nerve where it passes under the inguinal canal), the picture of burning pain, tingling and reduced sensation on the upper outer thigh, usually on one side, the advice to avoid tight-fitting clothing as the first treatment, and the recovery figure of about 85 percent with a wait-and-see approach.

Related terms

• Corset. The same wardrobe, the English spelling, and the page where the lung figures and the difference between underbust and overbust live.
• Fetish. Why a material or a fit switches on something that isn’t there without that object.
• Bondage. The comparison people make at once, and the difference: you get out of a korset yourself.
• Breath control. The reason not to stack a tightly laced korset with something else that limits the breath.
• Hood. The other garment in this list where the material does as much as the fit.
• Keurslijf is the older Dutch name for the garment, now used mostly figuratively. Tightlacing means stepping up the lacing bit by bit, with the wespentaille, a wasp waist, as the goal.