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limerence

UK /ˈlɪməɹəns/noun

limerence is a noun meaning “An involuntary romantic infatuation with another person, especially combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one's feelings reciprocated” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled L-I-M-E-R-E-N-C-E, and it appears about once in every 39 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of limerence is limerences.

What does limerence mean?

noun

  1. 1

    An involuntary romantic infatuation with another person, especially combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one's feelings reciprocated.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce limerence?

  • UK /ˈlɪməɹəns/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-limerence.oga, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of limerence

  • limerences plural
  • limerance

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is limerence?

Limerence appears about once in every 39 million words in written English, the 191,932nd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Limerence in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense state of mind:

LanguageWords
Frenchlimérence, limerence, limérance
GermanVerliebtheit, Limerenz
Portugueselimerence, enfatuação
Spanishlimerencia, infatuación

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does limerence come from?

From limer- (“a coined, arbitrary first element”) + -ence. Coined by American psychologist Dorothy Tennov in 1977 as an arbitrary euphonious replacement or alteration of the word amorance.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).