The OED attributes haptic and haptics to translations of a passage in Isaac Barrow's 1683 Lectiones Mathematicae,
Quod si perinde comperta foret undulationis aereae figura, qua sonus efficitur, et audiendi sensus impellitur, inde nova proculdubio pars emergeret Matheses, Acoustices nomine celebranda.
Haptice quoque, et Geustice, et Osphrantice pari jure mererenur in hunc ordinem cooptari; si cujusmodi motibus peraguntur istae sensiones conjectura subodorari possent philosophantes.
The first citation of haptic in the OED is from 1860, in William Whewell's edition, and the first of haptics in an earlier translation published in 1734 by John Kirby:
But neither term saw much light of day, and it is more probably more accurate to say that it was introduced from the world of psychology in the late 19th century, the OED's second suggestion. Specifically, it appears the 1892 Über den Hautsinn by Max Dessoir, coined as a parallel to acoustics and optics:
Ich erlaube mir, hierfür das Wort „Haptik" in Vorschlag zu bringen, das im Anschluss an Optik und Akustik gebildet und von dem Verbum ἁπτομαι abzuleiten ist.
or loosely,
I take the liberty to bring forward the word haptics in proposal, which follows optics and acoustics and is derived from the verb ἁπτομαι.
I imagine Dessoir wanted a term of Greek origin, hence haptics over, say, tactilics. Haptic as an adjective is cited from 1895 onwards, with the first post-Dessoir citation given from Mind 4:407:
In haptic sensations are recognised sensations of simple pleasure, of traction and of impact.
Until the term was applied to touchscreen technology, the psychological term seems to have been the principle use, hence the International Society for Haptics.
This expression, whether in its noun form have a beef, or its verb form, to beef, may come down to us from Cockney rhyming slang.
Beef rhymes with Thief
Beeves (archaic) rhymes with Thieves
Imagine a bustling market day. In the narrow streets, a neighborhood pickpocket weaves through the crowd, pursued by a stranger shouting, "Stop! Thief!" Imagine that none too few persons in the market know the thief, or consider themselves bound to him by common interest. To muffle the alarm, the bemused sympathizers call out "Hot Beef!" and amidst the confusion the rascal slips away.
Too fanciful for you? Well, then, if you will, accept only that Cockney rhyming slang is a real phenomenon, without delving into the reasons for its adoption.
From Historically Speaking:
This phrase has been around for a couple of centuries now and comes
from the London criminal underworld.
Well known for its use of cockney rhyming slang, phrases aren’t always
what they appear to be.
The traditional shout of “stop thief!” was mocked by being replaced by
“hot beef, hot beef” in criminal circles where it was thought that the
shouts of “stop thief” were nothing more than making fuss about
nothing.
The 1811 edition of the “Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue” defines Beef
as: “to cry beef; to give the alarm.”
Here are four related entries from the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811):
TO SING. To call out; the coves sing out beef; they call out stop thief.
BEEF. To cry beef; to give the alarm. They have cried beef on us.
Cant.--To be in a man's beef; to wound him with a sword. To be in a
woman's beef; to have carnal knowledge of her. Say you bought your
beef of me, a jocular request from a butcher to a fat man. implying
that he credits the butcher who serves him.
DUMMEE. A pocket book. A dummee hunter. A pick-pocket, who lurks
about to steal pocket books out of gentlemen's pockets. Frisk the
dummee of the screens; take all the bank notes out of the pocket
book, [D]ing the dummee, and bolt, they sing out beef. Throw away the
pocket book, and run off, as they call out "stop thief."
SQUEAK. A narrow escape, a chance: he had a squeak for his life. To
squeak; to confess, peach, or turn stag. They squeak beef upon us;
they cry out thieves after us. CANT.
Best Answer
I puritani hanno fatto furore! (I Puritani was a big hit!)
After the premiere of his opera I puritani at the Comédie Italienne in Paris, 24 Jan. 1835, the composer Vincenzo Bellini wrote to a friend:
In Bellini’s day, the theater slang expression fare furore, along with others drawn from the opera and theater, had slowly been making its way into general language use in Italy, where it is still current today. The earliest attestation of the phrase, however, had a completely different meaning:
Metaphorical violence, insanity, or anger is hardly alien to designations of popularity: consider a smash hit that’s now all the rage among its fan(atic)s who are absolutely crazy for it. In fact, in the early 19th century, if an opera wasn‘t an immediate furore, but was growing in popularity, it could be said to “attack.”
I could not determine from any online source exactly when the theatrical expression arose, but I suspect it was sometime after the mid-17th century dominance of commercial opera houses in Italy, when having a hit production didn’t merely add to fame but also fortune. Opera as popular entertainment was no small industry: Venice alone would boast of eleven opera houses; in Purcell’s London, there were none.
I also doubt —despite Bellini’s mentioning fare furore in the same breath as thunderous applause — that there was much metaphorical or associative force left in the Italian expression beyond a general notion of enthusiastic excitement. The mid-19th century coining of the verb furoreggiare with the identical meaning efficiently removes itself even further from any whiff of frenzied violence.
Many in Bellini’s Paris audience were familiar with the expression in its calqued French version, faire fureur, and that very year, it was defined in the sixth edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française as “said of a person or thing that is strongly en vogue, that excites in the public a great eagerness, a lively curiosity.”
In 1784, a German writer (Magazin der Musik 2, 563) cites an entire sentence in Italian, “Ma non fece furore” (But he wasn‘t a hit) because he finds the expression so characteristic of opera audiences in Italy and of the Italian mentality in general.The loud, boisterous, and furiously enthusiastic nature of such audiences will play a role in the English use of furore, which, unlike the French and German usage, has more interest in the noun than the entire phrase. Furore machen, however, begins to appear in 1830 as a fully German expression in the works of Heinrich Heine and Hermann von Pückler-Muskau and is still current today — along with its evil Italian twin, fare fiasco, Fiasko (machen), to be a total flop.
England
Despite the early lack of a dedicated opera venue and a resident company that only lasted eight years, England was not an opera wasteland. Travelling companies from Italy or Germany might remain in the country for extended stays, and the sons of aristocrats or wealthy businessmen would encounter opera in France or Italy as part of their “Grand Tour.” Musical journals would also report on productions in Italy and elsewhere.
While the online Etymological Dictionary and others suggest a 1790 appearance of furore in English, I have been unable to verify the date. Given the relative lack of online resources before 1800, that is hardly surprising. The first attestation I was able to find was in a newspaper article — not from a London paper, but Bristol:
Unlike the German and French expressions, furore appears without the bland causative, the emotional quality enhanced by the verb ‘excite’. The focus is on the enthusiastic response of the audience, efficiently including the applause of Bellini’s letter. This piece of music was surely the hit of the evening, but readers are left with the sounds and motion an audience member would have experienced first hand.
This usage also assumes that enough readers of this Bristol newspaper were both interested in the local cultural scene and knew the word or at least had heard it before. There must be some London history hiding within.
This history becomes more visible in 1824:
The Italian tutto furore ‘all furore’ flatters readers who understand the phrase and, like the earlier German citation, purports to tell the reader about Italian audiences, a memory wealthier readers who had travelled to Italy would savor.
Occasionally, however, there is something similar to the German and French as calques — or semicalques — of the Italian:
The Harmonicon, a periodical that reported opera and concert news from all over Western Europe, was one vehicle through which furore would become a common expression.
Furore as Chaotic, Out of Control
Not everyone was enthusiastic about enthusiastic opera audiences or Continental singers. Tutto furore could be nothing but sound and fury, unwarranted adulation of mediocrity, and loud, riotous mob behavior:
Or this comparison in a Welsh newspaper of the way the Spanish mezzo-soprano/contralto Maria Malibran was received in Britain and Milan:
From this description of police having to intervene in what in the English version of the French report was essentially a mob out of control, it does not take a conceptual leap to arrive at the modern British usage, still retaining a vaguely Italian pronunciation /fju:ˈrɔ:rɪ/ for any controversy or dispute. Remember also that the British usage has always focused on the excitement and affect, not the success it indicates:
America
The first use of furore in an American newspaper isn’t furore at all, but an italicized furor:
Ordinarily, italic furor would signal the original Latin meaning of unbridled rage, though the meaning here is clearly that of the Italian. This raises the question of whether the Italian three syllables ever penetrated American English beyond a few elites. This would certainly help explain its absence from American dictionaries and its virtual disappearance from American sources.
The Italian spelling, does, however, appear in a bit of newspaper filler in 1842:
This is the Italian spelling, but the meaning has been transformed to denote a popular trend, as in this Australian newspaper:
Later, however, the standard “Bellini” meaning appears:
The first decades of the twentieth century saw the virtual disappearance of furore, though one still occasionally finds it, these two in the modern British sense of controversy, brouhaha: