love affair
46
3.6
- noun
- /lʌv əˈfɛr/
- NSFW
:
aventura amorosa
- We had a short but passionate love affair.
- unhappy love affair
That was a real love affair till the day he died.
- That was a real love affair till the day he died.
- It's it's as close to a love affair as I shall ever have with a man.
- And they're entangled in this beautiful but tragic love affair that goes on the the rest of their life.
- Who we actually meet them after they've already kind of had their brief teenage love affair.
- It was people say that the real love affair, the real love story was John Paul.
- He says he's a faithful helper in a love affair.
Examples
-
The aftermath of a tragic love affair the previous year had left him lonely and emotionally drained.
Fiction book (2000) -
We never had the kind of love affair that you seem to think we did.
Fiction book (1995) -
That was a real love affair till the day he died.
-
It's it's as close to a love affair as I shall ever have with a man.
-
And I fell in love with him, and we began having this love affair.
-
On the surface, it depicts the aging writer's weekend love affair with a young woman journalist.
Academic text (1993) -
What started out as a passionate love affair between two good-looking and well-off people degenerated into incompatibility.
Fiction book (1999) -
Their love affair started secretly, hidden from their families.
-
The novel describes a passionate love affair between the two main characters.
-
After years apart, they rekindled their love affair while on vacation.
Synonyms
837
4.4
A secret sexual relationship often involving a married person and someone else
395
2.3
A close relationship between two people who love each other
94
3.2
A relationship between two people who have sex with each other
57
8.6
A romantic relationship that people keep secret
44
7.5
A secret sexual relationship often with someone outside marriage
32
6.7
A secret sexual relationship between two people
14
7.3
A secret sexual relationship between two people, often when one is married
5
9.3
A secret romantic relationship, often with someone who is married
A secret romantic or sexual relationship between two people
How Serious
∞
1.0
878
1.1
- NSFW
46
3.6
395
2.3
- NSFW
57
4.6
28
3.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning of 'love affair' is directly built from 'love' (romantic/sexual feeling) + 'affair' (a relationship or liaison), so a learner who knows both words can readily infer it denotes a romantic or sexual relationship, often secret or illicit. This compositional pattern is common cross-linguistically and follows standard noun–noun/nominal modifier logic, making it immediately comprehensible to B1 learners.
Etymology
The phrase love affair joins love and affair: affair can mean a private matter, so a love affair paints the picture of a private or hidden matter of love between two people. That's why it usually means a romantic relationship, often secret or 'forbidden'.