love affair

noun

1. a romantic relationship or episode between lovers; an amour.
2. an active enthusiasm for something:

   my love affair with sailing.

love affair

noun

1. a romantic or sexual relationship, esp a temporary one, between two people
2. a great enthusiasm or liking for something

   a love affair with ballet

Word History and Origins

Origin of love affair¹

First recorded in 1585–95

Example Sentences

His love affair with bikes began at ten years old, when his uncle Artemio let him tag along to Artemio’s job as a bike mechanic.

From Outside Online

The tragic love affair at the heart of the drama is the present, too.

From Washington Blade

Besides Roosevelt’s political associations in the Village, the book also describes other significant relationships in her life, such as her long and complex love affair with Associated Press journalist Lorena Hickok.

From Washington Post

Through Lilja’s heady and all-consuming love affair with a fellow student at her university, Hjörleifsdóttir explores the subtle, insidious ways in which desire and infatuation can blind one to manipulation, abuse and violence.

From Time

When the contemporary journalist, played by Felicity Jones, plots out the blossoming love affair and discovers that an unexpected rift separated them, she embarks on a mission to bring the two back together, 50 years later.

From Time

The second deals with the nature of the love affair that is central to the script.

From The Daily Beast

It's not unrealistic to think they might have had a love affair if he had wanted it or known how to ask.

From The Daily Beast

I begin talking about the nature of the love affair in the script.

From The Daily Beast

Just two days later, the papers began what can only be described as a love affair with Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later Atatürk).

From The Daily Beast

Over time, their potent mentor-mentee relationship evolved into a passionate on-again, off-again love affair.

From The Daily Beast

He was a boy of eighteen, aching over his first love affair; and she was divinely mothering him.

From Project Gutenberg

If she had had "some smashing love affair," as the more romantic Flora suggested, so much the better.

From Project Gutenberg

In his simple creed if a girl accepted a man and let him kiss her and wore his ring it was a reciprocal love affair.

From Project Gutenberg

The primary cause of Tom's abstraction was an open-air preacher, and the secondary cause was, of course, a love affair.

From Project Gutenberg

And now I have to give an account of another love-affair which deserves likewise the epithet "serious."

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• adultery
• affair
• courtship
• dalliance
• devotion
• fling
• flirtation
• infidelity
• involvement
• liaison
• love
• passion
• relationship
• tryst