no love lost
3
8.3
- idiom
- Informal
:
no hay cariño
- There's no love lost between Apple and its South Korean rival.
And, and, and I don't have, there's no love lost between me and Paul boy.
- And, and, and I don't have, there's no love lost between me and Paul boy.
- And, and so, yeah, that's, that's that's why, you know, there is there is no love lost between between Mogadishu and Hargiza.
Examples
-
To say there is no love lost between these two candidates is a gross understatement.
-
There was certainly no love lost between King Hussein and Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad.
Academic text (2004) -
"I think everyone knows that he and I have no love lost for one another.
Blog text (16) -
Perhaps a little harsh, but clearly there is no love lost between many engineering and IT departments.
Academic text (2011) -
There was no love lost between him and the senior state archaeologist.
Fiction book (2002) -
Okay, there's no love lost between Violet and me, but I take her part, not yours, you old dog.
Fiction book (1992) -
It's well-known there's no love lost between the witness and the sitting attorney general.
-
And, although there is no overt hostility between the Jat and Mazbhi Sikhs, there is no love lost between them either.
Academic text (1992) -
There was clearly no love lost between him and his wife.
-
It's easy to tell from their caustic exchange that there's no love lost between these two.
Antonyms
How Friendly
56
2.2
773
1.0
218
3.6
883
4.4
- Informal
3
8.3
194
4.6
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'mutual dislike' cannot be reliably derived from the literal constituents 'no' + 'love' + 'lost' — a literal parse could even suggest the opposite (that no love has been lost). The construction is a fixed, idiomatic phrase with an unpredictable semantic shift and limited cross-linguistic transparency, so learners who know the words will likely not infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
The idiom no love lost comes from the simple idea that two people have no 'love' or friendly feeling between them, so there is nothing warm left to lose. So it means 'they dislike each other'.