love
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "love", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "love" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "love" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
love is aEnglishnoun. It means: A deep caring for the existence of another. Pronounced /lʌv/. It ranks #147 in English word frequency. Often confused with LV and low.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | love |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /lʌv/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #147 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for love is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lʌv/. Corpus data places it at rank #147 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for love, with forms such as "llove", "loev", and "lovve". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "LV", "low", "luv", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English love, luve, from Old English lufu, from Proto-West Germanic *lubu, from Proto-Germanic *lubō, from Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- (“love, care, desire”). The close of a letter sense is presumably a truncation of With love or the like. The v… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is love, spelled L-O-V-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A deep caring for the existence of another.
- 2Strong affection.
- 3Strong affection.
- 4Strong affection.
- 5Strong affection.
- 6A person who is the object of romantic feelings; a darling, a sweetheart, a beloved.
- 7A term of friendly address, regardless of feelings.
- 8A thing, activity, etc. which is the object of one's deep liking or enthusiasm.
- 9Sexual desire; attachment based on sexual attraction.
- 10Sexual activity.
- 11An instance or episode of being in love; a love affair.
- 12Used as the closing, before the signature, of a letter, especially between good friends or family members, or by the young.
- 13Alternative letter-case form of Love (“personification of love”).
- 14A thin silk material.
- 15A climbing plant, Clematis vitalba.
Etymology
From Middle English love, luve, from Old English lufu, from Proto-West Germanic *lubu, from Proto-Germanic *lubō, from Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- (“love, care, desire”). The close of a letter sense is presumably a truncation of With love or the like. The verb is from Middle English loven, luvien, from Old English lufian (“to love”), from Proto-West Germanic *lubōn (“to love”), derived from the noun. Eclipsed non-native English amour (“love”), borrowed from Norman amour (“love”). Cognates Cognate with Scots luve (“love”), Saterland Frisian ljo, ljoo, ljoof (“dear, sweet”), Ljoote, Ljoowe (“love”), West Frisian leaf (“friendly, kind, cordial”), leafde (“love”), Dutch lief (“lovely, nice, sweet”), liefde (“love”), German lieb (“dear; lovable”), Liebe (“love”), German Low German Leevde, Lieve (“love”), Luxembourgish léif (“lovely, kind, nice, sweet”), Léift (“love”), Vilamovian łiwa (“love”), Yiddish ליב (lib, “nice; kind”), Icelandic ljúfur (“beloved, dear”), Norwegian Nynorsk, Swedish ljuv (“lovely, sweet”), Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌿𐍆𐍃 (liufs, “beloved, dear”), Albanian lyp (“to beg”), Russian любовь (ljubovʹ, “love”), Lithuanian liaupsė (“praise”), Latin libido (“desire, lust”), Polish lubić (“to like”), Persian آلفتن (âloftan, “to enamor”), Sanskrit लोभ (lobha, “desire, greed”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: llove,loev,lovve,lvoe,olve
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for love
Misspelling Variants of "love"
Frequency rank: #147 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: