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love

verb, noun — 26 senses

love

verbalso spelled Love

CA, US, UK /ˈlʌv/ · /ˈləʋ/

Etymology

From Middle English love, luve, from Old English lufu, from Proto-West Germanic *lubu, from Proto-Germanic *lubō, from Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- (“love, care, desire”). The close of a letter sense is presumably a truncation of With love or the like. The verb is from Middle English loven, luvien, from Old English lufian (“to love”), from Proto-West Germanic *lubōn (“to love”), derived from the noun. Eclipsed non-native English amour (“love”), borrowed from Norman amour (“love”). Cognates Cognate with Scots luve (“love”), Saterland Frisian ljo, ljoo, ljoof (“dear, sweet”), Ljoote, Ljoowe (“love”), West Frisian leaf (“friendly, kind, cordial”), leafde (“love”), Dutch lief (“lovely, nice, sweet”), liefde (“love”), German lieb (“dear; lovable”), Liebe (“love”), German Low German Leevde, Lieve (“love”), Luxembourgish léif (“lovely, kind, nice, sweet”), Léift (“love”), Vilamovian łiwa (“love”), Yiddish ליב (lib, “nice; kind”), Icelandic ljúfur (“beloved, dear”), Norwegian Nynorsk, Swedish ljuv (“lovely, sweet”), Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌿𐍆𐍃 (liufs, “beloved, dear”), Albanian lyp (“to beg”), Russian любовь (ljubovʹ, “love”), Lithuanian liaupsė (“praise”), Latin libido (“desire, lust”), Polish lubić (“to like”), Persian آلفتن (âloftan, “to enamor”), Sanskrit लोभ (lobha, “desire, greed”).

7 senses
  1. 1To have a strong affection for (someone or something).
  2. 2To need, thrive on.
  3. 3To be strongly inclined towards something; an emphatic…
  4. 4To seek the good or honor of (someone), care deeply…
  5. 5To derive delight from a fact or situation.
  6. 6Synonym of heart (verb).
  7. 7To have sex with (perhaps from make love).
1

Sometimes, Stative, Usually To have a strong affection for (someone or something).

  • I love my spouse. I love you! I love that song!
  • wanted to take her in my arms and tell her how I loved her, and had taken her hand from the rail and started to draw her toward me when Olson came blundering up on deck with his bedding.1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VI, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:
1 more example
  • Just give me a reason, / just a little bit's enough, / just a second we're not broken, just bent / and we can learn to love again.2013 February 26, Pink, Nate Ruess, Just Give Me a Reason:
2

To need, thrive on.

  • Mold loves moist, dark places.
3

To be strongly inclined towards something; an emphatic form of like.

  • I love walking barefoot on wet grass; I'd love to join the team; I love what you've done with your hair
  • "I love not that underlings should perceive my wisdom."1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
1 more example
  • “Everywhere he went, I went with him. When I was twenty-three, I had been nearly all over the world. It was a splendid life—I loved it.”1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 141:
4

Sometimes, Usually To seek the good or honor of (someone), care deeply about, to be dedicated to (someone or something).

  • For God so loued þe world, that he gaue his only begotten Sonne: that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, John 3:16:
  • Iesus sayd vnto him, Thou shalt loue the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soule, and with all thy minde. This is the first and great Commandement. And the second is like vnto it, Thou shalt loue thy neighbour as thy selfe.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 22:37–39:
5

Ironic, Sometimes To derive delight from a fact or situation.

  • I love the fact that the coffee shop now offers fat-free chai latte.
6

Internet Synonym of heart (verb).

  • She loved my photos of the kids playing with the dogs.
7

Euphemistic To have sex with (perhaps from make love).

  • I wish I could love her all night long.
Synonyms
adore, cherish, enjoy, go to bed with, sleep with, care for, cling to, dote, fancy, love
Antonyms
hate, despise, fear
Derived terms
295 termsall is fair in love and war, all-loving, all's fair in love and war, antilove, apple of love, arrow of love, belove, boylove, boy's love, boys' love, brotherly love, calf love, castle of love, cat's love, childlove, courtly love, cupboard love, cyberlove, declaration of love, do you love me, everything is fair in love and war, face only a mother could love, face that only a mother could love, falling in love, fall in love, fall out of love, first love, forelove, for love nor money, for love or money, for the love of, for the love of all that is good, for the love of all that is holy, for the love of Betsy, for the love of Christ, for the love of fuck, for the love of God, for the love of Goddess, for the love of me, for the love of Mike, for the love of Moses, for the love of shit, for the love of the game, free love, girllove, God love someone, hate the sin but love the sinner, I have to love you and leave you, I love you, I'm in love with you, in love, in love with, instalove, labor of love, labour of love, lack-love, lad's love, ladylove, lady love, law of love, leaflove, light-o'-love, light o' love, Lord love a duck, Lord love you, lots of love, lovability, love a duck, love affair, love-aholic, loveaholic, love apple, love at first sight, love away, lovebead, love bead, love-bead, love bird, lovebird, love-bite, love bite, lovebite, love boat, love bomber, love-bombing, love bombing, love-bomb, love bomb, lovebot, love box, lovebud, love bug, lovebug, lovebunny, love button, love buzz, love canal, love cannot be forced, love charm, love-child, lovechild, love child, love conquers all, love curl, love custard, love cycle, love darg, love dart, loveday, love doll, lovedom, love dove, love draught, love drug, loved-up, lovee, love egg, love feast, love-feat, lovefest, loveful, love game, love glove, love goggles, love grass, love-hair, love handle, love-handled, love-hate, love-hatred, love heart, love hold, love hole, love hotel, love-in, love-in-a-mist, love in a mist, love in a puff, love-in-idleness, love interest, love-in-winter, love is blind, love is love, love it or lump it, love jihad, love jones, love jug, love juice, lovekin, lovekins, love knot, love language, loveless, love letter, love-lies-bleeding, love life, lovelight, love-light, lovelike, loveling, love lips, lovelock, love lock, love-lock, lovelore, lovelorn, love lotion, lovely, love machine, lovemaker, love making, love-making, love manual, lovemap, lovemark, love marriage, love match, love-match, lovemate, lovemobile, lovemonger, love mound, love muscle, loveness, love nest, love nut, love offering, love of one's life, love on, love orgy, love padlock, lovepat, love philtre, love pill, love pillow, love play, love pocket, love polygon, love potion, love powder, love pump, love quadrangle, lover, love rat, love recipe, love rectangle, love rose, lovertine, love sausage, love scam, love scene, love script, loveseat, love seat, loveship, love-shy, love-shyness, lovesick, love slave, lovesome, love song, love spoon, love spud, love spuds, love stick, lovestone, love story, love-struck, love swing, love-tap, lovetap, love tap, love team, loveteam, love the sinner but hate the sin, love token, love tonic, love tool, love toy, love triangle, love truncheon, love tunnel, love up, love vine, love wand, love-worthiness, loveworthy, love ya, lovey-dovey, love you, lovie, loving kindness, lovish, loyal love, make love, make love to the camera, mislove, money-love, motherlove, no glove no love, no love lost, nonlove, obsessive love disorder, one love, only a mother could love, outlove, overlove, parental love, Persian love, physical love, platonic love, play for love, progressive love, puppy love, Queen of Love, relove, self-love, self-loving, sisterly love, soul-love, the course of true love never did run smooth, the love of money is the root of all evil, tough-love, tough love, tree of love, true love, truelove, true-love knot, true-love-knot, tug of love, tunnel of love, unlove, unrequited love, what's not to love, zouk love
Related terms
lov, luv, wuv, charity, fall in love, revere
Hypernyms
affect, desire, like
Hyponyms
worship, worship the ground someone walks on

Love

noun
1

radiotelephony clear-code word for the letter L.

World War II era; joint US/RAF; World War II era; joint US/RAF

love

noun
Etymology

From Middle English love, luve, from Old English lufu, from Proto-West Germanic *lubu, from Proto-Germanic *lubō, from Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- (“love, care, desire”). The close of a letter sense is presumably a truncation of With love or the like. The verb is from Middle English loven, luvien, from Old English lufian (“to love”), from Proto-West Germanic *lubōn (“to love”), derived from the noun. Eclipsed non-native English amour (“love”), borrowed from Norman amour (“love”). Cognates Cognate with Scots luve (“love”), Saterland Frisian ljo, ljoo, ljoof (“dear, sweet”), Ljoote, Ljoowe (“love”), West Frisian leaf (“friendly, kind, cordial”), leafde (“love”), Dutch lief (“lovely, nice, sweet”), liefde (“love”), German lieb (“dear; lovable”), Liebe (“love”), German Low German Leevde, Lieve (“love”), Luxembourgish léif (“lovely, kind, nice, sweet”), Léift (“love”), Vilamovian łiwa (“love”), Yiddish ליב (lib, “nice; kind”), Icelandic ljúfur (“beloved, dear”), Norwegian Nynorsk, Swedish ljuv (“lovely, sweet”), Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌿𐍆𐍃 (liufs, “beloved, dear”), Albanian lyp (“to beg”), Russian любовь (ljubovʹ, “love”), Lithuanian liaupsė (“praise”), Latin libido (“desire, lust”), Polish lubić (“to like”), Persian آلفتن (âloftan, “to enamor”), Sanskrit लोभ (lobha, “desire, greed”).

16 senses
  1. 1A deep caring for the existence of another.
  2. 2A profound and caring affection towards someone.
  3. 3Affectionate, benevolent concern or care for other…
  4. 4A feeling of intense attraction towards someone.
  5. 5A deep or abiding liking for something; an enthusiasm…
  6. 6A person who is the object of romantic feelings; a…
  7. 7A term of friendly address, regardless of feelings.
  8. 8A thing, activity, etc. which is the object of one's…
  9. 9Sexual desire; attachment based on sexual attraction.
  10. 10Sexual activity.
  11. 11An instance or episode of being in love; a love affair.
  12. 12Used as the closing, before the signature, of a letter…
  13. 13Alternative letter-case form of Love (“personification of love”).
  14. 14A thin silk material.
  15. 15A climbing plant, Clematis vitalba.
  16. 16Charity.
1

A deep caring for the existence of another.

› Strong affection.

2

A profound and caring affection towards someone.

  • A mother’s love is not easily shaken.
  • My husband’s love is the most important thing in my life.
2 more examples
  • My love for Melca is eternal.
  • He on his side / Leaning half-raised, with looks of cordial love / Hung over her enamoured.1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost:
3

Affectionate, benevolent concern or care for other people or beings, and for their well-being.

  • The love of your neighbor as yourself, is expressly given as the definition and test of Charity,—not alms-giving—and this love is … the highest of all the Divine commands[.]1864, Utilitarianism Explained and Exemplified in Moral and Political Government
  • Through nonviolent resistance we shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system. We must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as citizens, but may it never be said, my friends, that to gain it we used the inferior methods of falsehood, malice, hate, and violence.1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart”, in Strength to Love, New York: Pocket Books, published 1964, →OCLC, page 7:
4

A feeling of intense attraction towards someone.

  • I have never been in love as much as I have with you.
  • Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman ſcorn'd.1697, [William] Congreve, The Mourning Bride, a Tragedy. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act III, page 39:
1 more example
  • The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again; for, even after she had conquered her love for the Celebrity, the mortification of having been jilted by him remained.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
5

A deep or abiding liking for something; an enthusiasm for something.

  • My love of cricket knows no bounds.
  • For three decades, the average number of miles driven by US motorists increased steadily. Then, in 2007, that steady climb was suddenly halted. [...] What magic caused Americans to temper their longstanding love of the open road?2012, Philip Auerswald, The Coming Prosperity, →ISBN:
6

A person who is the object of romantic feelings; a darling, a sweetheart, a beloved.

  • Open the temple gates unto my love.1595, Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion:
  • O love, dispatch all business, and be gone!c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
2 more examples
  • 'Oh, my love, my love!' she murmured, 'wilt thou ever know how I have loved thee?' and she kissed him on the forehead, and then went and stood in the pathway of the flame of Life.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
  • I met my love by the gasworks wall.1969, The Dubliners, Dirty Old Town:
7

Commonwealth, Colloquial A term of friendly address, regardless of feelings.

  • Hello love, how can I help you?
8

A thing, activity, etc. which is the object of one's deep liking or enthusiasm.

  • But it wasn't until [Theresa M. Claiborne] went to ROTC training camp at the University of California at Berkeley that she discovered that flying was her first love. "Pilots talk about getting bit by the flying bug," she says. "I thought, This is heaven."1997 March, “Faces of Today's Black Woman”, in Ebony, volume 52, number 5, page 96:
9

Euphemistic Sexual desire; attachment based on sexual attraction.

  • The prospect that their cherished Greeks would have countenanced, much less honored, a love between men that expressed itself carnally, however, was not so easily assimilated.2013, Ronald Long, Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods, Routledge, →ISBN, page 3:
10

Euphemistic Sexual activity.

  • —What think you, my lord, of... love? —You mean ‘rumpy-pumpy’.1986, Ben Elton et al., “Bells”, in Blackadder II:
11

An instance or episode of being in love; a love affair.

  • Maybe it was just a summer love, something with no future.2014, E. L. Todd, Then Came Absolution, →ISBN:
12

Used as the closing, before the signature, of a letter, especially between good friends or family members, or by the young.

13

Alternative letter-case form of Love (“personification of love”).

  • At busy hearts in vain love's arrows fly; …c. 1810, Samuel Johnson (in The Works of Samuel Johnson)
14

Obsolete A thin silk material.

  • Such a kind of transparency, as that of a Sive, a piece of Cyprus, or a Love-Hood.1664, Robert Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, […] :
15

A climbing plant, Clematis vitalba.

16

Obsolete Charity.

Tyndale Bible; also puristic; Tyndale Bible; also puristic

love

noun
Etymology

Now widely believed (due to historical written record) to be from the idea that when one does a thing “for love” it is for no monetary gain, the word “love” thus implying “nothing”. Use of “love” for having no score extends to the 18th century in tennis as well as certain card games. The former assumption that it had originated from French l’œuf (literally “the egg”), due to its shape, has largely been discredited and is no longer widely accepted. However, the apparent similarity of the shape of an egg to a zero has inspired similar analogies, such as the use of duck (reputed to be short for duck's egg) for a zero score at cricket, and goose egg for "zero".

1

Ball games, Billiards, Games, Hobbies, Lifestyle, Racquet sports, Sports Zero, no score.

  • So that’s fifteen-love to Kournikova.
  • The next day Agassi came back from two sets to love down to beat Courier in five sets.2013, Paul McNamee, Game Changer: My Tennis Life:
2

Nothing; no recompense.

  • I fought the white man for less than sixpence. I fought him for love, which is nothing at all.1916, H. Rider Haggard, The Ivory Child:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for love and Love.

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