cupboard love
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.44 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Insincere (and usually fickle) love pretended in the hope of gaining something useful in exchange.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "1788, Anna Seward, Letter to Mrs Knowles April 20, 1788 read in Archibald Constable (editor), Letters of Anna Seward: Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807, Archibald Constable & Co, and Longman, etc. (1811) p. 103, This last and long-enduring passion for Mrs Thrale was, however, composed equally perhaps of cupboard-love, Platonic love, and vanity tickled and gratified from morn to night by incessant homage."
- "Besides, Sandy includes a little cupboard love in the detail of his sentiments. Nothing can be a more undeniable proof of the truth of this statement than the trials of Mrs. K—— and Mrs. D——. In both instances the lovers were nice, attentive fatherly men."
- "I stump down my field, not the lane past Mike's, and the ewes think it's feeding time. I let them bombard me, grateful for the noisy bleating of their cupboard love."
- "You don't owe them anything Stephen, its just cupboard love...suddenly they need you...you said it yourself, they never contacted you before."