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Definition of 'love'

Learner: love Video pronunciation English: love American: love Example sentences Word lists Idiom
list Word partners

love

(lʌv

Word forms: loves

, loving

, loved

1. VERB

If you love someone, you feel romantically or sexually attracted to them, and they are very important to
you.

Oh, Amy, I love you. [VERB noun]

We love each other. We want to spend our lives together. [VERB noun]

Synonyms: adore, care for, treasure, cherish More Synonyms of love

2. UNCOUNTABLE NOUN

Love is a very strong feeling of affection towards someone who you are romantically or sexually
attracted to.

Our love for each other has been increased by what we've been through together. [+ for]

...a old fashioned love story.

...an album of love songs.

Synonyms: passion, liking, regard, friendship More Synonyms of love

3. VERB

You say that you love someone when their happiness is very important to you, so that you behave in a
kind and caring way towards them.

You'll never love anyone the way you love your baby. [VERB noun]

4. UNCOUNTABLE NOUN

Love is the feeling that a person's happiness is very important to you, and the way you show this feeling
in your behaviour towards them.

My love for all my children is unconditional. [+ for]

She's got a great capacity for love.

5. VERB

If you love something, you like it very much.

We loved the food so much, especially the fish dishes. [VERB noun/verb-ing]

I loved reading. [VERB noun/verb-ing]

...one of these people that loves to be in the outdoors. [VERB to-infinitive]

I love it when I hear you laugh. [V it wh]

Synonyms: enjoy, like, desire, fancy [informal] More Synonyms of love

6. VERB

You can say that you love something when you consider that it is important and want to protect or
support it.

I love my country as you love yours. [VERB noun]

7. UNCOUNTABLE NOUN

Love is a strong liking for something, or a belief that it is important.

This is no way to encourage a love of literature.

The French are known for their love of their language. [+ of]

8. COUNTABLE NOUN [usually with poss]

Your love is someone or something that you love.

'She is the love of my life,' he said.

Music's one of my great loves.

9. VERB

If you would love to have or do something, you very much want to have it or do it.

I would love to play for England again. [VERB to-infinitive]

I would love a hot bath and clean clothes. [VERB noun]

His wife would love him to give up his job. [VERB noun to-infinitive]

10. COUNTABLE NOUN

Some people use love as an affectionate way of addressing someone.

[British, informal, feelings]

Well, I'll take your word for it then, love.

Don't cry, my love.

Synonyms: beloved, dear, dearest, sweet More Synonyms of love

11. NUMBER
In tennis, love is a score of zero.

He beat the Austrian three sets to love.

12. CONVENTION

You can use expressions such as 'love', 'love from', and 'all my love', followed by your name, as an
informal way of ending a letter to a friend or relation.

...with love from Grandma and Grandpa.

13. UNCOUNTABLE NOUN

If you send someone your love, you ask another person, who will soon be speaking or writing to them,
to tell them that you are thinking about them with affection.

Please give her my love.

14. See also free love, -loved, loving, peace-loving, tug-of-love

15. See fall in love

16. See fall in love

17. See be in love

18. See be in love

19. See no love lost/little love lost

20. See make love

21. See for love or money

22. See love at first sight

23. labour of love

More Synonyms of love

COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers

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love
in British English

(lʌv )

VERB

1. (transitive)

to have a great attachment to and affection for

2. (transitive)

to have passionate desire, longing, and feelings for

3. (transitive)

to like or desire (to do something) very much

4. (transitive)

to make love to

5. (intransitive)

to be in love

NOUN

6.

a. an intense emotion of affection, warmth, fondness, and regard towards a person or thing

b. (as modifier)

love song

love story

7. a deep feeling of sexual attraction and desire

8. wholehearted liking for or pleasure in something

9. Christianity

a. God's benevolent attitude towards humankind

b. humankind's attitude of reverent devotion towards God

10. Also: my love

a beloved person: used esp as an endearment

11. British informal

a term of address, esp but not necessarily for a person regarded as likable

12. (in tennis, squash, etc) a score of zero

13. fall in love

14. for love

15. for love or money

16. for the love of

17. in love

18. make love

▶ Related adjective: amatory

Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers

Word origin

Old English lufu; related to Old High German luba; compare also Latin libēre (originally lubēre) to please

love

in American English

(lʌv )

NOUN

1. a deep and tender feeling of affection for or attachment or devotion to a person or persons

2. an expression of one's love or affection

give Mary my love

3. a feeling of brotherhood and good will toward other people

4.
a. strong liking for or interest in something

a love of music

b. the object of such liking

5.

a. a strong, usually passionate, affection of one person for another, based in part on sexual attraction

b. the person who is the object of such an affection; sweetheart; lover

6.

a. sexual passion

b. sexual intercourse

7. Tennis

a score of zero

8. Theology

a. God's tender regard and concern for all human beings

b. devotion to and desire for God as the supreme good, that all human beings have

9. [L-]; Mythology

a. Cupid, or Eros, as the god of love

b. Rare

Venus

VERB TRANSITIVE

Word forms: loved or ˈloving

10. to feel love for

11. to show love for by embracing, fondling, kissing, etc.

12. to delight in; take pleasure in

to love books

13. to gain benefit from

a plant that loves shade

VERB INTRANSITIVE

14. to feel the emotion of love; be in love

Idioms:

fall in love (with)

for love

for the love of

in love

make love

no love lost between

not for love or money

SYNONYMY NOTE:

love implies intense fondness or deep devotion and may apply to various relationships or objects [sexual
love, brotherly love, love of one's work, etc.]; affection suggests warm, tender feelings, usually not as
powerful or deep as those implied by , love [he has no affection for children]; attachment implies
connection by ties of affection, attraction, devotion, etc. and may be felt for inanimate things as well as
for people [an attachment to an old hat]; infatuation implies a foolish or unreasoning passion or
affection, often a transient one [an elderly man's infatuation for a young girl]

Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition. Copyright © 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
All rights reserved.

Word origin

ME < OE lufu, akin to OHG luba, Goth lubo < IE base *leubh-, to be fond of, desire > libido, lief, lust;
(sense 7) < phr. play for love, i.e., play for nothing

Examples of 'love' in a sentence

love

These examples have been automatically selected and may contain sensitive content. Read more…

She'd have trouble raising a hundred dollars -'Rosie, please -'No, love.

Jon Cleary YESTERDAY'S SHADOW (2001)

You, on the other hand, maintain the absurd belief that love is more important than money.

Lisa Scottoline LEGAL TENDER (2001)

Quotations

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

Elizabeth Barrett BrowningSonnets from the Portuguese

All that matters is love and work

attributed to Sigmund Freud

Money was scarce but new love has no need of money. Somewhere to go, to be together is all and we
were lucky. We had that. Hell is love with no place to go

Dilys RoseAll the Little Loved Ones

To be overtopped in anything else I can bear: but in the tests of generous love I defy all mankind

Robert Burnsletter to Clarinda

Love's pleasure lasts but a moment; love's sorrow lasts all through life

Jean-Pierre Claris de FlorianCelestine

What love is, if thou wouldst be taught,

Thy heart must teach alone -

Two souls with but a single thought,

Two hearts that beat as one

Friedrich HalmDer Sohn der Wildnis

Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it

Jerome K. JeromeThe Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Love's like the measles - all the worse when it comes late in life

Douglas JerroldWit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold

No, there's nothing half so sweet in life

As love's young dream

Thomas MooreLove's Young Dream

And all for love, and nothing for reward

Edmund SpenserThe Faerie Queene

' Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all

Alfred, Lord TennysonIn Memoriam A.H.H.

Love means never having to say you're sorry

Erich SegalLove Story

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love

Alfred, Lord TennysonLocksley Hall

Love conquers all things; let us too give in to love

VirgilEclogue

Love and do what you will

Saint Augustine of HippoIn Epistolam Joannis ad Parthos

Those have most power to hurt us that we love

Francis Beaumont and John FletcherThe Maid's Tragedy

My love's a noble madness

John DrydenAll for Love

And love's the noblest frailty of the mind

John DrydenThe Indian Emperor

Love's tongue is in the eyes

Phineas FletcherPiscatory Eclogues

Love is only one of many passions

Samuel JohnsonPlays of William Shakespeare, preface

Where both deliberate, the love is slight;

Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?

Christopher MarloweHero and Leander

If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?

Lily Tomlin

Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love

William ShakespeareAs You Like It

The course of true love never did run smooth

William ShakespeareA Midsummer Night's Dream

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds

William ShakespeareSonnets

O my love's like a red, red rose

Robert BurnsA Red, Red Rose

Two things a man cannot hide: that he is drunk, and that he is in love

Antiphanes

Every man is a poet when he is in love

PlatoSymposium

one that lov'd not wisely but too well

William ShakespeareOthello

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god

Jorge Luis BorgesThe Meeting in a Dream

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away

Dorothy Parker

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret

Aphra BehnThe Lover's Watch, Four O'Clock

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it

Bible: Song of Solomon

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends

Bible: St. John

O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird

And all a wonder and a wild desire

Robert BrowningThe Ring and the Book

Whoever loves, if he do not propose

The right true end of love, he's one that goes

To sea for nothing but to make him sick

John DonneLove's Progress

I am two fools, I know,

For loving, and for saying so

In whining poetry

John DonneThe Triple Fool

How alike are the groans of love to those of the dying

Malcolm LowryUnder the Volcano

After all, my erstwhile dear,

My no longer cherished,

Need we say it was not love,

Now that love has perished?

Edna St. Vincent MillayPasser Mortuus Est

If I am pressed to say why I loved him, I feel it can only be explained by replying: `Because it was he;
because it was me.'
MontaigneEssais

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies

John DonneThe Anagram

Love thy neighbour as thyself

Bible: Leviticus

All's fair in love and war

Love is blind

One cannot love and be wise

Love makes the world go round

Love will find a way

Word lists with

love

affection, tennis

More idioms containing

love

someone would love to be a fly on the wall

cupboard love

a labour of love

all's fair in love and war

for love nor money

no love lost

COBUILD Collocations

love
abiding love

absolutely love

brotherly love

divine love

doomed love

express love

find love

forbidden love

lasting love

lifelong love of

profound love of

real love

sacrificial love

share a love of

tender love

unconditional love

undying love

unrequited love

In other languages

British English: love /lʌv/ noun

Love is the very strong warm feeling that you have when you care very much about someone, or you
have strong romantic feelings for them.

In the four years since we married, our love has grown stronger.

American English: love

Arabic: ٌ‫حُب‬

Brazilian Portuguese: amor

Chinese: 爱

Croatian: ljubav

Czech: láska

Danish: kærlighed

Dutch: liefde

European Spanish: amor

Finnish: rakkaus

French: amour

German: Liebe

Greek: αγάπη

Italian: amore

Japanese: 愛

Korean: 사랑

Norwegian: kjærlighet

Polish: miłość

European Portuguese: amor

Romanian: iubire

Russian: любовь

Latin American Spanish: amor

Swedish: kärlek

Thai: ความรัก

Turkish: sevgi/aşk

Ukrainian: кохання

Vietnamese: tình yêu

British English: love /lʌv/ verb

care about If you love someone, you care very much about them.

American English: love

Arabic: ‫يَ َو ُّد‬

Brazilian Portuguese: amar

Chinese: 爱

Croatian: voljeti

Czech: milovat

Danish: elske

Dutch: houden van

European Spanish: amar

Finnish: rakastaa

French: aimer

German: lieben

Greek: αγαπώ

Italian: amare

Japanese: 愛する

Korean: 사랑하다

Norwegian: elske

Polish: pokochać

European Portuguese: amar

Romanian: a iubi

Russian: любить

Latin American Spanish: amar

Swedish: älska

Thai: รัก
Turkish: sevmek

Ukrainian: кохати

Vietnamese: yêu

British English: love /lʌv/ verb

enjoy If you love something, you like it very much.

We both love football.

American English: love

Arabic: ُّ‫يُ ِحب‬

Brazilian Portuguese: adorar

Chinese: 喜爱

Croatian: voljeti

Czech: zbožňovat

Danish: elsker

Dutch: houden van

European Spanish: encantar

Finnish: rakastaa

French: aimer beaucoup

German: gern mögen

Greek: αγαπώ

Italian: amare

Japanese: ･･･が大好きだ

Korean: 사랑하다

Norwegian: elske

Polish: uwielbiać

European Portuguese: adorar

Romanian: a-i plăcea

Russian: любить

Latin American Spanish: encantargustar mucho

Swedish: älska

Thai: รัก ชื่นชอบ

Turkish: sevmek

Ukrainian: любити

Vietnamese: yêu

Translate your text for free

Nearby words of

love

lovage

lovastatin

lovat

love

love affair

love apple

love at first sight

All ENGLISH words that begin with 'L'

Related terms of

love

in love

love-in
calf love

find love

for love

View more related words

Source

Definition of love from the Collins English Dictionary

Jun 11, 2020

Word of the day

Gorgon

any of three winged monstrous sisters , Stheno , Euryale , and Medusa , who had live snakes for hair,
huge teeth , and brazen claws

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