8 Uncommon Words Related to Love

Definition: a song or poem of lovers parting at dawn

Many a poet over the centuries has endeavored to write an aubade. Some contemporary aubades hew close to the definition of aubade mentioned here (such as “Aubade” by Amber Flora Thomas and “Aubade” by Mark Wunderlich) while are encapsulated more by aubade’s broader sense of “a song or poem greeting the dawn” (such as “Aubade” by Camille Rankine and “Aubade to Langston” by Rachel Eliza Griffiths). Popular songwriters love aubades, too. A favorite earworm of ours happens to be “Angel of the Morning,” written by Chip Taylor and recorded by a number of artists, perhaps most notably by Juice Newton. We can hear her crooning its chorus now: “Just call me angel of the morning, angel / Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.”

Handel’s opera “Flavio” opens with an aubade, “Ricordati, mio ben,” a morning duet between lovers as one of them leaves their bed.
— Anne Midgette, The New York Times, 8 Apr. 2003

Definition: to snuggle or nuzzle

This Is Just To Say

we have looked up
the word snoozle
that is in
our dictionary

and which
you were probably
wondering
what it meant

Forgive us
it is perhaps a blend of snooze and nuzzle
so sweet
and so cute

Squealing with pleasure. Joe snoozled his face up to the baby’s which the mite tried to avoid hilariously. But suddenly it reached out and grabbed Joe by the moustache, wildly with a spasmodic jerk. Joe’s head went along involuntarily, he could not pull away.
— William Carlos Williams, White Mule (New Directions, 1937)

Definition: to kiss

Osculate turns up mostly in humorous contexts as a fancy word meaning “to kiss.” The Latin noun for “kiss,” osculum, is also the diminutive of the Latin noun os, meaning “mouth.” Our adjective oral also comes from this root. Osculate (or its related noun osculation) might be used as an alternative to kiss to avoid repeating the latter word, or to bring an ironically clinical connotation to a common action for which slangier alternatives like smooch exist.

I’m not against kissing as such. After all, we’ve been doing it for a long time. Are we at root indulging in a mastication ritual when we osculate? Grooming each other? Eating those we desire? Who knows? The point is that it needs to be reined in.
— Robert Dessaix, The Byron Shire Echo (New South Wales, Australia), 26 Dec. 2016

Definition: excessively fond of or submissive to a wife

The etymology of uxorious is straightforward: uxor is the Latin word for “wife,” and the English language sure does love slapping an -ious suffix on words whenever it gets a chance. The definition is perhaps less straightforward and dependent upon the eye of the beholder, i.e. is it even possible to be excessively fond of or submissive to one’s wife? Tread carefully when answering this one, friends.

Considering Plutarch’s “Life of Antony,” she [Judith Thurman] notes that it was “contemporary with another ancient biography based on scant evidence and hearsay: the Gospels.” Zing! She’s got Nabokov’s number, too: Reading his uxorious letters to Véra, Thurman shrewdly diagnoses “the ostentation of a love that can be hard to distinguish from self-infatuation.”
— Hermione Hoby, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2023

Definition: a love letter

The French language has from temps to temps been called “the language of love,” and indeed the English language has borrowed quelques words and phrases from French that pertain to love, including paramour, amour propre, amour courtois, amour fou (“mad love; obsessive passion”), and billet-doux. In French, billet doux means “sweet letter.” English writers first fell in love with the word during the 17th century and have been committed to using it as a romantic alternative to “love letter” ever since. Isn’t that doux?

Had Grace been entirely uninterested in the writer, she would have thought the flattery and inflated language of this epistle absolutely disgusting; but we are all apt to excuse the folly which we imagine proceeds from excessive affection for ourselves. The billet-doux was locked in a secret drawer, with feelings that certainly widely differed from disapprobation; and the ring, ornamented by a single sapphire, surrounded with pearl, was placed upon her finger.
— Lydia Maria Francis Child, The Rebels; or, Boston Before the Revolution (1825)

Definition: transitory love or affection often experienced by young people

The term puppy love is more commonly used than calf-love these days, perhaps owing to more people raising pets than cattle. But both refer to intense yet often fleeting affection experience by young—especially teenaged—couples.

Her adorers were divided between the longing to lie down under her feet and to fold her protectingly in their arms. Calf-love is an undying element in human-nature, a shame-faced derogatory name for the romantic, self-immolating emotion woven from fancy, yearning and the infection of other’s ardour. Love of this foam and flame quality, too tender to be mere aesthetic absorption in a beautiful object, too selfless to be sensual, too intense to be only absurd, rose up towards Madame Okraska and encompassed her from hundreds of hearts and eyes.
— Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Tante (1911)

Definition: a shy longing and usually amorous glance —usually used in plural

Perhaps casting sheep’s eyes (as defined in our unabridged dictionary) at someone is a precursor to calf-love? Or perhaps hog heaven?

The pertinacious Miss Boreman was not wrong in her suggestion that the Major was a calf, and a calf he was, nodoubt, but still we all seemed to think that he cast sheep’s eyes at the sacred person of Mrs. Staunchingzele. Designing man!
— Edmund Frederick John Carrington, Confessions of an Old Maid (1828)