Lover

How to spell lover

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lover

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lover mean?

1. nounA person with whom someone has a romantic or sexual relationship.
2. nounA person who greatly enjoys or is devoted to a particular thing.

Lover in a sentence

• The novel follows a devoted lover who waits years for a letter.

• As a coffee lover, he roasts his own beans at home.

• She introduced her new lover to the family at dinner.

• The festival attracts every jazz lover in the region.

Where does lover come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the Old English verb lufian, meaning 'to love' or 'to hold dear', and the related noun lufu, 'affection' or 'desire'. These come from a much older Germanic root that also gave German lieben and that ultimately ties back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to care for' or 'to desire', the same family that produced Latin libet 'it pleases' and even the word 'libido'. The agent ending -er, also native to Old English, simply marks the doer of an action, so a lover is literally 'one who loves'. The romantic sense, a person with whom one shares a sexual or affectionate relationship, was well established by the Middle Ages, while the broader sense of an enthusiast (a lover of art) developed alongside it. Because the spelling keeps the silent-looking 'o' that sounds like the 'u' in 'cup', the word looks irregular, but it has stayed remarkably stable since Old English.

How the word is built

• love (from Old English lufu: affection, desire)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)