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She loves to go for walks and gets along with all people and dogs.

I have never loved any man in my life except him.

And if you can't do this out of love for me, do this out of love for her.

She loved the challenges that her work brought.

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

love

These are words often used in combination with love.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

brotherly love

Do not be too judgmental, be compassionate and brotherly love will reign supreme.

divine love

Having revealed divine love there is no need for him to go on revealing it.

enduring love

I have a great and enduring love of that language and of the people.

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

A1,A1,A2,B1,B1,A2,B1,B1,B2,B2

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LOVE meaning: 1. to like another adult very much and be romantically and sexually attracted to them, or to have.... Learn more.

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Love. 29 Jan. 2025, dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/love.

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"to like another adult very much and be romantically and sexually attracted to them"

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noun

1. sexual passion or desire.

2. active, self-giving concern for the well-being of others: Love of one's neighbor is the greatest virtue. What this suffering world needs is more love.

3. a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart: I long to be with you, my love. He was my first and only love.

4. a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour: It's the story of her many loves, told through the eyes of a journalist.

5. Chiefly Tennis. a score of zero; nothing.

See more

verb (used with object), loved, lov·ing.

to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection, often mingled with sexual desire, for (another person).

1. to feel a strong liking for or take great pleasure in; enjoy actively and with enthusiasm: I love music. He's loving his new job.

2. to feel or express reverent devotion toward; adore.

3. to have sexual intercourse with.

4. to embrace and kiss (someone), as a lover.

See more

verb (used without object), loved, lov·ing.

Verb Phrases

love up, to hug and cuddle: She loves that little guy up every chance she gets.

See More Definitions

Idioms about love

out of devotion, affection, liking, or enjoyment.

2. for the love of, in consideration of; for the sake of: For the love of mercy, stop that noise!

1. in love, infused with or feeling deep affection or passion: He was a youth always in love.

2. in love with, feeling deep affection or passion for (a person, idea, occupation, etc.); enamored of: I was in love with the girl next door. Anyone spending that many hours here without pay must be in love with their work!

to engage in sexual activity.

to embrace and kiss as lovers.

4. no love lost, dislike; animosity: There was no love lost between the two brothers.

See More Idioms

First recorded before 900; Middle English noun love, louve, luve, Old English lufu, cognate with Old Frisian luve, Old High German luba, Gothic lubō; verb derived from the noun; akin to Latin libēre (earlier lubēre ) "to be pleasing," Polish lubić "to like, enjoy;" see also lief

Other words for love

1

liking, inclination, regard, friendliness

2

tenderness, fondness, predilection, warmth, passion, adoration

15

like

16

adore, adulate, worship

See synonyms for love on Thesaurus.com

Opposites for love

Other words from love

out·love, verb (used with object), out·loved, out·lov·ing.

o·ver·love, verb, o·ver·loved, o·ver·lov·ing.

Words Nearby love

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use love in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for love

noun

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

(as modifier): love song; love story

2. a deep feeling of sexual attraction and desire

1. wholehearted liking for or pleasure in something

God's benevolent attitude towards man

man's attitude of reverent devotion towards God

3. British informal a term of address, esp but not necessarily for a person regarded as likable

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

5. for love or money (used with a negative) in any circumstances: I wouldn't eat a snail for love or money

to have sexual intercourse (with)

archaic to engage in courtship (with)

See more

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

Other words from love

Related adjective: amatory

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Idioms and Phrases with love

In addition to the idioms beginning with love

love affair

love at first sight

also see:

all's fair in love and war

course of true love

fall in love

for the love of

labor of love

make love

misery loves company

no love lost

not for love or money

puppy love

somebody up there loves me

See More Origins

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words

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Love definition: a strong feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, such as for a parent, child, friend, or pet. See examples of LOVE used in a sentence.

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“Dictionary.com | Meanings and Definitions of English Words.” Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/love.

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"a strong feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, such as for a parent, child, friend, or pet"

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: strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties

: attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers

After all these years, they are still very much in love.

: unselfish loyal and benevolent (see ) concern for the good of another: such as

: holding one's opponent scoreless in tennis

Synonyms

Examples of love in a Sentence

Noun Verb I love either rushing off into abstractions, or shamelessly talking personalities. "Nay," said Elizabeth, "this is not fair. You wish to think all the world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of any body. I only want to think you perfect, and you set yourself against it. Do not be afraid of my running into any excess, of my encroaching on your privilege of universal good will. You need not. There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well."

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'love.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Noun and Verb

Middle English, from Old English lufu; akin to Old High German luba love, Old English lēof dear, Latin lubēre, libēre to please

Noun

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a(1)

Verb

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1

The first known use of love was before the 12th century

Dictionary Entries Near love

Cite this Entry

"Love." Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love. Accessed 9 Oct. 2023.

More from Merriam-Webster on love

- Updated example sentences

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Merriam-Webster unabridged

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strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers; affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests... See the full definition

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“---.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 28 Jan. 2025, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/love.

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"strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties"

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love, v.¹ meanings, etymology and more | Oxford English Dictionary

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love, v.¹ meanings, etymology, pronunciation and more in the Oxford English Dictionary

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Love, V.¹ Meanings, Etymology and More | Oxford English Dictionary. www.oed.com/dictionary/love_v1?tab=meaning_and_use#38910713.

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"To have or feel love towards (a person, a thing personified) (for a quality or attribute); to entertain a great affection, fondness, or regard for; to hold dear."

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love: a romantic feeling for another

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love: a warm personal attachment towards another

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love: strong feeling of affection coming from a kinship

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love: a great deal of fondness and affection

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"Over the last four decades, psychology has seen a growing interest in interper-
sonal relationships, including the relationship of love."

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many psychologists spent so much time on figuring out what love means but overall most people have there own definition of love. To some it could show that you care about them alot and others you may just feel that

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"Friendships and romantic relationships have similarities in some character-
istics and differences in others."

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Showing self disclosure could be good and healthy for a relationship with someone you love and care about, because you are expressing your feeling

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"love centres on the belief that the subject shares a valuable personal
relationship with the beloved."

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this article explores this "What is the point of love" and i feel like its connected to my topic because that's what i am trying to understand. So far it talks about, loving someone is in some way is like loving yourself.

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"how much information about ourselves we must reveal
to a lover, or to be more specific"

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this article talks about you could give privacy and trust to those you love and care about because some people have trust issues and its hard to trust and give privacy

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"Love perhaps best can be seen as
a sort of a prism – looking at it in
different ways reveals different
faces of the same phenomenon."

meaning love is complicated

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"Domestic violence, also known as “intimate partner
violence,” is generally defined as “a pattern of behavior in any
relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control
over an intimate partner.”

this is NOT love

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this is about someone your looking for and there chrateristics

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"Love is the glue that binds
us to the most important people in our lives. ¶
As social animals, we depend on those folks for
our emotional and physical health—our very
survival, experts say."

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"Feel the love" talking about how love helps us but could break us easily. Love is somewhat valuable to us all humans and mostly needed to help us heal and learn from our mistakes.

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Some words are remarkably hard to define. This is true even of words that we use daily without much difficulty. When pressed to come up with a definition for these common terms, we can find ourselves at a loss. Try this experiment: without looking at a dictionary, try to write a 1-2 sentence definit

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Even after looking at the dictionary definitions, it is much easier to use the word than to wrap our minds around its meaning.

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The word "love" appears 2,146 times in Shakespeare's collected works (including a handful of "loves" and "loved"). Add to that 59 instances of " beloved" and 133 uses of "lov ing " and you've got yourself a "whole lotta love." So, what does Shakespeare have to say about the subject? Here are 20 quotations from the Bard about love.
⇒ Related: Read, search, and download all of Shakespeare's plays and poems for free with The Folger Shakespeare.
"What is Love?"

What does Shakespeare have to say about love? Let's start with the basics.

"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken."

- Sonnet 116

In an interview on Shakespeare Unlimited, Folger Director Emerita Gail Kern Paster noted that Sonnet 116 is a frequent choice for wedding toasts. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine, editors of The Folger Shakespeare, wrote of this famous sonnet, "The poet here meditates on what he sees as the truest and strongest kind of love, that between minds. He defines such a union as unalterable and eternal."

"A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
. . .
And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony."

- Love's Labor's Lost, Act 4, scene 3, lines 328 - 339

In Love's Labor's Lost, the King of Navarre and his three friends vow to spend three years cloistered from the world, studying, fasting, and seeing no women. But as soon as they've signed the contract, the Princess of France and her three pals show up to meet with the King. Of course, everyone immediately falls in love and the four men have to figure out how to extricate themselves from their solemn oaths. In Act 4, scene 3, Berowne, the wittiest of the four fellows, argues that love, not rigorous study, will make them better men. In fact, Berowne says, love is like a superpower that "gives to every power a double power." The full speech is a beautiful testament to the gifts of love.

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."

- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, scene 1, lines 240 - 241

In Shakespeare's time, Cupid was often depicted wearing a blindfold. In the Trevelyon Miscellany, a 1608 manuscript collection of patterns, notes, quotations, rhymes, and more from the Folger's collection, compiler Thomas Trevelyon notes:
Venus the lady of love inflameth the heart. . . then Cupid her son shooteth his dart, and being blind, some times striketh with his arrow of love, and some time with his arrow of hatred, but at all times so shooteth that his arrows tend to love, in the beginning, though afterwards discords arise betwixt lovers.
Romeo, perhaps Shakespeare's most famous lover, also describes Love this way: "Alas that love, whose view is muffled still, / Should without eyes see pathways to his will" ( Romeo and Juliet, 1.1).
"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain."
- Venus and Adonis, line 799
"There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned."
- Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, scene 1, line 16

Cleopatra tells Antony she'll "set a bourn"-a boundary or limit-"how far to be beloved." Antony tells her, "Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new Earth." This is a fun activity to do with your partner: ask them to describe the physical extent of their love for you, then build a fence there together.
"What is love? 'Tis not hereafter:
Present mirth hath present laughter."
- Twelfth Night, Act 2, scene 3, line 48

Seize the day! Love, Feste's song suggests, is best enjoyed in the present: "What's to come is still unsure. / in delay there lies no plenty, / Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. / Youth's a stuff will not endure." (Playwright Noël Coward borrowed the phrase "present laughter" for the title of his play about an actor who has just turned 40). The idea is echoed in a song from the penultimate scene of As You Like It, in which the characters sing, "And therefore take the present time. . . / For love is crownéd with the prime" (5.3).

"Letters Full of Love"

So you're in love: what kind of things are you supposed to say? Here are a few romantic quotations from Shakespeare to make your lover's heart go pitter-patter.
"I do love nothing in the world so well as you-is not that strange?"
- Much Ado About Nothing, Act 4, scene 1, line 281

Benedick and Beatrice, everybody's favorite Shakespearean couple, provide us with a few of the most romantic lines in Shakespeare. See also: "I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest" (4.1.300), and "I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes" (5.2.101).

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep. The more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite."

- Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, scene 2, lines 140 - 142

"Thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
"I kiss thee with a most constant heart."
- Henry IV, Part 2, Act 2, scene 4, line 274
"A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee."
- All's Well That Ends Well, Act 4, scene 2, line 78

"When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' th' sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that. . ."

- The Winter's Tale, Act 4, scene 4, line 166 - 168
"So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground." ⇒ Related: the Reduced Shakespeare Company's Austin Tichenor reflects on Shakespeare's complicated and equivocal expressions of love. "I would not wish any companion in the world but you."
This sonnet isn't quite so rapturous as its opening lines sound. We need food to live, but sometimes we eat too much. Things that grow in the earth need water, but too much rain will cause a flood. In Sonnet 75, the speaker finds that sometimes his passion can become unpleasantly overwhelming.
"Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life."
- The Tempest, Act 3, scene 1, lines 65 - 66
⇒ Related: Download illustrated Shakespearean valentines that you can send to your friends, family, and significant others.
- The Comedy of Errors, Act 3, scene 2, line 72

"Love is a Devil"
"The course of true love never did run smooth."
Anyone who has experienced "the pangs of despised love" ( Hamlet, 3.1) knows that love doesn't always end well. Shakespeare also wrote a lot about the challenges of being in love.

- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, scene 1, line 136

This line from Lysander might as well be Midsummer's thesis statement; its central couples spend the whole play breaking up, making up, and, in Titania's case, cuddling up with enchanted donkey-man Bottom.

"If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die."

- Twelfth Night, Act 1, scene 1, line 1 - 3

Twelfth Night's opening line is one of Shakespeare's most famous. But Duke Orsino goes on to say how miserable being in love makes him feel. "If music be the food of love," he says, keep playing and fill me up so that I don't feel this way any more!

"Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in a lover's eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet."

- Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, scene 1, lines 197 - 201

"If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou has not loved."

- As You Like It, Act 2, scene 3, lines 33 - 35

As You Like It has a lot to say about what it's like to be in love. In Act 3, Rosalind tells Orlando that a true lover has "a lean cheek. . . a blue eye and sunken. . . an unquestionable spirit. . . a beard neglected." If you're really in love, Rosalind says, "your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation" (3.2). But how do lovers keep from tripping over their shoelaces?

In Act 2, scene 1 of when Ophelia is telling her father Polonius about Hamlet's recent behavior, her description sounds a lot like Rosalind's description of a lover:

Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosèd out of hell
To speak of horrors-he comes before me.

"When you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave."
It's not surprising that Polonius immediately guesses that Hamlet is in "the very ecstasy of love."

- Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, scene 1, lines 99 - 100

What's your favorite quotation about love from Shakespeare's works?

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20 Shakespeare quotes about love | Folger Shakespeare Library

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The word "love" appears 2,146 times in Shakespeare's collected works (including a handful of "loves" and "loved"). Add to that 59 instances of " beloved" and 133 uses of "lov ing " and you've got yourself a "whole lotta love." So, what does Shakespeare have to say about the subject?

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Some people get mixed up thinking love and abuse are the same thing because most are blinded by there feelings of love of the other person

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"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds"

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This was written by Maja Djikic and Keith Oatley. Its a secondary resource because the authors done research to make there assumptions about Love and personal relationships. The article was to help the audience understand what's the difference of relationships between personal and romantic

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This source was created by Mie Kito and they worked by the Department of Psychology of the California state university , Chico. This article was created by other sources and articles too , so this source is a secondary source. The perspective of this source, is to give a little insight of romantic and platonic relationships and show the difference and similarities between these

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This article was written by Carolyn Price made up of sources so this is a secondary source. This article was created and directed towards the audience that need a better understanding of what love is and how its sometimes shown. The perspective of this article ,"What is Love" is a question for the audience to think about while there reading this source.

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This article was written by Keith Dromm. This source is a secondary source because the author uses quotes and uses other articles to show his claim and prove it. The perspective of this source is to give privacy and trust those you love because you need to have trust between one another to have strong bond, and that start by giving privacy.

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This source was written by Robert J. Sternberg. This articles format is a bit different then the others, its more organized and more through. It really discuses the deep topics of love and searching for love. This article looks like a Primary source because the author is talking about his life and how he was searching for love from others. This article gives perspective of Robert J. Sternberg's stages of his quest to find love.

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This article was written by Alia B. Reddell. The format of this article is written in long detailed paragraphs discussing the topic. The perspective of this article is to spread awareness of the dangers of toxic love and some people are blinded by love because there confused what abusive love is. This is a secondary source that uses sources to help support the claim.

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This source was written by Jennifer King and Deborah Copaken, illustrated by tug rice. The format of this article is different from others its more detailed by the drawings, fonts and the way the paragraphs are wrote. There are pictures to go with the paragraphs as well. This is a secondary source that used other sources to help write this article. This article gives questions and specific questions to help the reader understand