first love
- noun
- /fɜrst lʌv/
- That's Ruth, my first love.
- feel your first love
But this mistake has cost me my first love and has cost me my first heartbreak.
- But this mistake has cost me my first love and has cost me my first heartbreak.
- And then me and Nate just happened and I really feel Nate is my first love.
- Like, like immensely like that's my first love.
- And in this first love, the woman is extremely vulnerable, wide open.
- And our main character, Voya, is told by her ancestor that she has to destroy her first love.
- And that thing about, like, everyone thinks that they are never going to be able to get over their first love.
- And so that was part of, you know, is my first serious girlfriend, first love and and it ended basically as badly as a relationship can end.
- Like the most amazing boyfriend, the my first love, like everything about him and the way he loved me was amazing.
- Most people will recall that first love story.
- And I think a lot of people can relate that your first love, you are super like head over heels.
Examples
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And I'm still with my first love.
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No matter how many relationships I have, you'll always be my first love.
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And I remember I was with this person, my first love, you know, for a year.
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You were my first love...
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You were my first love.
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I lived through it when my first love married another.
Fiction book (1990) -
Diane was my first love.
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I was eighteen years old, and this was my first love.
Fiction book (2002) -
But no matter how much time passes you'll always be my first love.
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No one's ever gonna live up... to the fuzzy memory of your first love, Lori.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase 'first love' is directly compositional: 'first' denotes temporal order and 'love' denotes romantic attachment, so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to the initial person one has a romantic relationship with. This modifier+noun pattern is common across languages and follows standard English semantics, making it readily understandable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
First love comes from the simple idea that first means the very first and love means a romantic feeling. Like a first kiss that stays in your memory, that first relationship often feels special, so first love means 'the first person someone had a romantic relationship with'.