Emotion

French émotion, from Old French emouvoir — to stir up. From Latin emovere — to remove, move out, agitate. From e- (out) + movere (to move). Originally referred to physical or social movement — agitation, disturbance — before narrowing in the 17th and 18th centuries to internal mental states.

Replaced older terms — 'passions,' 'affections,' 'sentiments' — as the dominant English word for inner feeling states in the 19th century. Psychology has cataloged emotions in many ways — Paul Ekman's six basic emotions, Plutchik's wheel, dimensional models of valence and arousal. Marketing, politics, and media increasingly engineer emotional response as a primary target.