love

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /lʌv/

• Audio (UK)

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• Audio (US)

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• (Northern England) IPA^(key): /lʊːv/
• (Ireland) IPA^(key): /lʊv/
• Rhymes: -ʌv

From Middle English love, luve, from Old English lufu (“love, affection, desire”), from Proto-Germanic *lubō (“love”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- (“love, care, desire”).

The closing-of-a-letter sense is presumably a truncation of With love or the like.

The verb is from Middle English loven, lovien, from Old English lufian (“to love, cherish, sow love to; fondle, caress; delight in, approve, practice”), from the noun lufu (“love”), see above.

love (countable and uncountable, plural loves)

1. (uncountable) Strong affection.
   1. 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.

      • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost:

        He on his side / Leaning half-raised, with looks of cordial love / Hung over her enamoured.

      • 2014, S. Hidden, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Mystical Perspectives on the Love of God (→ISBN)
   2. Affectionate, benevolent concern or care for other people or beings, and for their well-being.
      • 1864, Utilitarianism Explained and Exemplified in Moral and Political Government:

        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[.]

   3. A feeling of intense attraction towards someone.

      I have never been in love as much as I have with you.

      • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 8, in The Celebrity:

        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.

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

      My love of cricket knows no bounds.

      • 2012, Philip Auerswald, The Coming Prosperity (→ISBN):

        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?

2. (countable) A person who is the object of romantic feelings; a darling, a sweetheart, a beloved.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Spenser

     Open the temple gates unto my love.

   • 1596-97, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III Scene 2

     O love, dispatch all business, and be gone!

   • 1969, The Dubliners, Dirty Old Town

     I met my love by the gasworks wall.

3. (colloquial, Britain) A term of friendly address, regardless of feelings.

   Hello love, how can I help you?

4. A thing, activity, etc which is the object of one's deep liking or enthusiasm.
   • 1997 March, "Faces of Today's Black Woman", in Ebony, volume 52, number 5, page 96:

     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."

5. (euphemistic) Sexual desire; attachment based on sexual attraction.
   • 2013, Ronald Long, Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods, Routledge (→ISBN), page 3:

     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.

6. (euphemistic) Sexual activity.
   • 1986, Ben Elton & al., Blackadder II, "Bells":

     —What think you, my lord, of... love?

     —You mean ‘rumpy-pumpy’.

7. An instance or episode of being in love; a love affair.
   • (Can we date this quote?), E. L. Todd, Then Came Absolution (→ISBN):

     Maybe it was just a summer love, something with no future.

8. Used as the closing, before the signature, of a letter, especially between good friends or family members, or by the young.
9. Alternative letter-case form of Love (“personification of love”).
   • c. 1810,, Samuel Johnson (in The Works of Samuel Johnson):

     At busy hearts in vain love's arrows fly; [...]

10. (obsolete) A thin silk material.
    • 1664, Robert Boyle, Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, […]

      Such a kind of transparency, as that of a Sive, a piece of Cyprus, or a Love-Hood.

11. A climbing plant, Clematis vitalba.

• (darling, sweetheart): baby, darling, lover, pet, sweetheart, honey, love bird
• (term of address): mate, lover, darling, sweetie, sweetheart

• (strong affection): hate, hatred, angst; malice, spite
• (absence of love): indifference

love (third-person singular simple present loves, present participle loving, simple past and past participle loved)

1. (usually transitive, sometimes intransitive) To have a strong affection for (someone or something).
   • 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot Chapter VI

     I 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.

   • 2013 February 26, Pink and Nate Ruess, Just Give Me a Reason:

     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.

   I love my spouse.   I love you!

2. (transitive) To need, thrive on.

   Mold loves moist, dark places.

3. (transitive, colloquial) 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

4. (usually transitive, sometimes intransitive) To care deeply about, to be dedicated to (someone or something).
   • John 3:16

     For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

   • Matthew: 37-38

     You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your whole mind, and your whole soul; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

   • 2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27:

     The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […] offering services that let you […] "share the things you love with the world" and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.

5. (transitive) To derive delight from a fact or situation.

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

6. (transitive) To lust for.
7. (transitive, euphemistic) To have sex with (perhaps from make love).

   I wish I could love her all night long.

• hate, despise

• lov
• luv
• wuv

• charity

From Middle English loven, lovien, from Old English lofian (“to praise, exalt, appraise, value”), from Proto-Germanic *lubōną (“to praise, vow”), from *lubą (“praise”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- (“to like, love, desire”), *lewbʰ-.

love (third-person singular simple present loves, present participle loving, simple past and past participle loved)

1. (transitive, obsolete or Britain dialectal) To praise; commend.
2. (transitive, obsolete or Britain dialectal) To praise as of value; prize; set a price on.

Said by some to be from the idea that when one does a thing “for love”, that is for no monetary gain, the word “love” implies "nothing". The previously held belief that it originated from the French term l’œuf (“the egg”), due to its shape, is no longer widely accepted, though compare the use of duck (reputed to be short for duck's egg) for a zero score at cricket.

love (uncountable)

1. (racquet sports, billiards) Zero, no score.

   So that’s fifteen-love to Kournikova.

   • 2013, Paul McNamee, Game Changer: My Tennis Life

     The next day Agassi came back from two sets to love down to beat Courier in five sets.

• levo, levo-, velo-, vole, voël

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɔvɛ/

love f pl

1. (slang) money

• See also prachy

• love in Kartotéka Novočeského lexikálního archivu

See lov

• IPA^(key): /lɔːvə/, [ˈlɔːwə]

love c

1. plural indefinite of lov

From Middle Low German lōve.

• IPA^(key): /lɔːvə/, [ˈlɔːwə]

love c

1. trust, faith

• på tro og love

From Old Norse lofa.

• IPA^(key): /lɔːvə/, [ˈlɔːwə]

love (imperative lov, infinitive at love, present tense lover, past tense lovede, perfect tense har lovet)

1. praise
2. promise

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love

1. (archaic) singular present subjunctive of loven

• velo, voel

love

1. first-person singular present indicative of lover
2. third-person singular present indicative of lover
3. first-person singular present subjunctive of lover
4. first-person singular present subjunctive of lover
5. second-person singular imperative of lover

• vélo, vole, volé

From Latin lupa, feminine of lupus. Compare Venetian lova, French louve.

love f (plural lovis)

1. she-wolf

• lôf

love

1. ten

lōve

1. dative singular of lof

• luve, lufæ, lufe

From Old English lufu, from Proto-Germanic *lubō.