love
/ˈlʌv/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.82 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "A mother’s love is not easily shaken."
- "My husband’s love is the most important thing in my life."
- "My love for Melca is eternal."
- "He on his side / Leaning half-raised, with looks of cordial love / Hung over her enamoured."
- "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[.]"
- "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."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰéh₂ Proto-Germanic *lubō Proto-West Germanic *lubu Old English lufu Middle English love English love 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. 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”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈlʌv/
- British English: /ˈlʌv/
Usage
Inflected Forms
loves (plural)
loue (alternative, obsolete)
luv (alternative, Internet)
loves (present, singular)
loving (participle, present)
loved (participle, past)
loved (past)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
loved (first person, past)
lovest (archaic, present)
loved (past, second person)