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Dictionary of American Words And Phrases by John Russell Bartlett.

An action of the organs of sense may be either involuntary or voluntary. Accordingly we say to hear, to see, to denote an involuntary act; and to look at, to hearken or to listen to, to denote a voluntary one. With regard to the other senses we are not so well provided with words; but some people, prompted apparently by a feeling of this deficiency, endeavor to supply it by construing the verbs to feel, to taste, to smell, with the preposition of, to signify a voluntary act. Hence, to feel, taste, smell of a thing, is to do so intentionally. This corruption is rarely met with in writing.


In the course of the forenoon, a few women came around our tent--felt of it--and peeped through the cracks, to see Mrs. Perkins.--Perkins's Residence in Persia, p. 103.

Dictionary of American Words And Phrases by John Russell Bartlett.

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