heart-shaped love-lock
- noun
:
candado en forma de corazón
- Tourists often engrave their names on a heart-shaped love-lock before attaching it to a famous landmark.
Examples
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She fastened a heart-shaped love-lock to the bridge to commemorate their anniversary.
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Look at that heart-shaped love-lock on the fence!
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He surprised her with a heart-shaped love-lock to celebrate their engagement.
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They attached a heart-shaped love-lock to the bridge.
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He surprised her with a heart-shaped love-lock to celebrate their engagement.
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She fastened a heart-shaped love-lock to the bridge to commemorate their anniversary.
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Tourists often engrave their names on a heart-shaped love-lock before attaching it to a famous landmark.
Synonyms
A padlock attached to a place like a bridge by a couple to show their lasting love
Surface Forms
Morphology
heart-shaped + love-lock
The noun is transparently built from 'heart-shaped' (in the form of a heart) + 'love-lock' (interpretable as a lock associated with love, analyzable into 'love' + 'lock'), so a learner who knows these constituents can infer it is a heart-shaped padlock symbolizing love. This follows a straightforward adjective + noun composition found cross-linguistically, so the meaning should be clear to a B1 learner even if the hyphenated compound is unfamiliar.
Etymology
Heart-shaped love-lock comes from a simple scene: couples attach a small padlock shaped like a heart to a bridge or fence and often throw away the key. By 'locking' their names on a love-lock, they show 'love' and 'lasting commitment', so the object now stands for a romantic promise.
