anti-romantic

American  

[an-tee-roh-man-tik, an-tahy-] / ˌæn ti roʊˈmæn tɪk, ˌæn taɪ- /

Or antiromantic

adjective

1. not involving love or romance.

   One way to ignore Valentine's Day is to do something on the anti-romantic end of the spectrum and watch some horror movies with other single friends.

2. characterized by or portraying a view of love and relationships that is practical rather than idealized, and often transactional or circumstantial.

   The anti-romantic comedy-drama espouses a frank and scathing view of sexual relations.

3. realistic; pragmatic; practical.

   It is still possible, even in an age so ferociously anti-romantic as our own, to write fantastic stories for adults.

   His anti-romantic poetry is a reaction to the real and immediate experience of war, depicted in all its scarring reality.

4. Sometimes anti-Romantic in a style that is unlike or in opposition to the romantic style in music, art, literature, etc..

   The composer’s works incorporate experimentalism in a way that is decidedly anti-romantic.

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Other Word Forms

• anti-romantically adverb
• antiromantically adverb

Etymology

Origin of anti-romantic

anti- ( def. ) + romantic ( def. )

Example Sentences

For now, they conspire to rule over a fractious post-revolutionary France, and also to transform this lavish palatial drama and sinewy war epic into a veritable anti-romantic comedy.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 22, 2023

“But just as romance has to understand the potential for sadness, the resolutely anti-romantic Yang knows you need a dollop of romance if you want to break your readers’ hearts.”

From Seattle Times • Sep. 8, 2021

In some ways, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s focus on spoofing rom-com clichés has always made it seem like an anti-romantic comedy.

From The Guardian • Nov. 13, 2018

Notoriously self-flagellating, compulsively anti-romantic, “he was never truly comfortable unless he was seething with unhappiness at something.”

From New York Times • Apr. 10, 2017

He saw, not the war so much as the international diplomacy that led up to the war, under the anti-romantic and satirical comic vision.

From Old and New Masters by Lynd, Robert