Exploring the Word History of Love

Hello,

As explained last time, I’m currently working through the list of words donated to me by the Academy Books Teen Book Club. This week’s word is the shortest on the list but definitely worthy of investigation – love.

I’ve dabbled in these waters before as I ended up with an entire chapter devoted to Norse Romance in my book “Words the Vikings Gave Us”, but sadly this one can’t be tracked back to the Vikings.

In Old English if you were talking about love you would have used the word lufu. I’m relieved the spelling has changed since then. Lufu described a wide variety of loves – romantic attraction, lust, affection, love of God, and love as an abstract concept. Lufu came to Old English from a ProtoGermanic root word – lubo and ultimately from an earlier root word leubh (to care, love, or desire). Lubo also gave cousin words to Old High German (liubi for joy), German (Liebe), Old Norse (Vikings always ready for some romance!), Old Norse, Dutch, Saxon, Frisian etc. Clearly Northern Europeans were a loving lot.

Love has given us a variety of phrases over the centuries which isn’t surprising as it’s so fundamental to the human experience. Calling somebody your love dates back to the early 1200s. By the early 1400s you could “fall in love” with somebody or “be in love with” them. By the late 1500s you might say “for love or money” and if you were “making love” you were flirting with them (nothing stronger for that one until the 1950s apparently).

The phrase “no love lost” is one of those ones with two opposing meanings. There are examples of it being used in the 1600s to mean two people who hate each other and also two people who love each other. Perhaps the whole love-hate relationships trope goes back further than you might think?

One which always bemused me as a tennis-loving teen was the scoring in tennis games where love means you haven’t scored any points yet. That dates back to the late 1600s and the widely accepted theory is that somebody with no score was playing for the love of the game but I find that hard to believe. Anybody have any other ideas?

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)