Thread: Usage of the term "stalking": was it around in 1979?

Hello all,

I have a character who is stalking another. A girl who is basically chasing this married guy, showing up at his job, threatening to tell his wife, etc. And I have another character telling a third about it. He says "Do you know she's been stalking some guy at the Blake Tavern?" But the problem is that my story takes place in 1979 and I don't think that word was in use back then. Or am I wrong? Does anybody know?

I have tried to word it differently, i.e. Do you know she's been chasing some guy, following some guy, harassing some guy, etc. but I can't think of any word that will convey the meaning as strongly.

Would love suggestions.

The word wasn’t in use back then. A suitable alternative for the period might be pestering. Definitely do not use chasing or following as they imply physical activity, which stalking isn’t always.

It first appeared in the obssessive sexual sense in the American press in the 1990s.

"A Study of Stalkers" Mullen et al.. (2000) identified five types of stalkers:

•Rejected stalkers pursue their victims in order to reverse, correct, or avenge a rejection (e.g. divorce, separation, termination).

•Resentful stalkers pursue a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victims – motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress the victim.

•Intimacy seekers seek to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. To many of them the victim is a long-sought-after soul mate, and they were 'meant' to be together.

•Incompetent suitors, despite poor social or courting skills, have a fixation, or in some cases a sense of entitlement to an intimate relationship with those who have attracted their amorous interest. Their victims are most often already in a dating relationship with someone else.

•Predatory stalkers spy on the victim in order to prepare and plan an attack – often sexual – on the victim.


The problem with words like Bothering, Pestering, Annoying is that they tend to be overt actions and don't have the element of secrecy and obsessiveness about them. Stalking was originaly used to describe a method of hunting in which one covertly and silently tracked down prey, so its transference to the obsessive characteristics of the psychologicaly defective would-be lover was singularly aposite.

Unless you are writing a pastiche of a 1970s story, I don't see why you shouldn't use the word stalker; after all, in the film Shakespeare in Love the characters didn't wander round saying: Prithy tell me sire, wouldst though in all conscience..., No, they basically spoke normal modern English.

For more colloquial or emotive terms, try hounding, dogging, or shadowing.

Although the behaviour has been known for some time -

When Louisa May Alcott penned A Long Fatal Love Chase -the first stalking novel ever written -in 1866...[1]

[1]Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health
Stalking: the state of the Science
J. REID MELOY,
University of California, San Diego/San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute/Forensis, Inc. (http//:Forensis.org)

- stalking didn't become a crime in its own right until 1990 and throughout the following decade as states and nations introduced legislation or enacted laws specifically against stalking.

In 1979, people would have called it (sexual) harassment, or (sexually) harassing.

Sexual harassment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term sexual harassment was used in 1973 in a report to the then President and Chancellor of MIT about various forms of gender issues. (See Saturn's Rings, 1974). Rowe has stated that she believes she was not the first to use the term, since sexual harassment was being discussed in women's groups in Massachusetts in the early 1970s

Types of harassment

Pest - This is the stereotypical "won't take 'no' for an answer" harasser who persists in hounding a target for attention and dates even after persistent rejections. This behavior is usually misguided, with no malicious intent.

Incompetent - These are socially inept individuals who desire the attentions of their targets, who do not reciprocate these feelings. They may display a sense of entitlement, believing their targets should feel flattered by their attentions. When rejected, this type of harasser may use bullying methods as a form of revenge.

Stalking - Persistent watching, following, contacting or observing of an individual, sometimes motivated by what the stalker believes to be love, or by sexual obsession, or by anger and hostility.

The first state to criminalize stalking in the United States was California in 1990

Stalking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I would guess the word stalking would not have been used more then 3 to 5 yrs before that.

Originally Posted by Cran

For more colloquial or emotive terms, try hounding, dogging, or shadowing.

Careful about using Dogging, it has very specific connotations in England!