calf love
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of calf love
First recorded in 1815–25
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But Edward Ellis, who helped make memorable the cheaply made quickie, A Man To Remember, does not turn the trick with this thin-spun tale of village politics, catty gossip, calf love.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the 24 years since young Jack Pickford played Willie Baxter in the silent screen version of Seventeen, cinemaddicts forgot how much charm there is in that classic of calf love on Main Street.
From Time Magazine Archive
Hence, too, the importance of "calf love," which serves as a sort of apprenticeship to the mystery, and enables you to discriminate between the substance and the shadow.
From Pebbles on the shore [by] Alpha of the plough by A. G. (Alfred George) Gardiner
Most of the town young fellows of his age he found had a "girl" and almost every girl had a "fellow"; there was calf love in abundance, but he was a different brand of veal.
From The Portygee by Joseph Crosby Lincoln
And in "calf love" I do not include the adumbrations of extreme childhood like those immortalised in Annabel Lee:— I was a child and she was a child In that kingdom by the sea.
From Pebbles on the shore [by] Alpha of the plough by A. G. (Alfred George) Gardiner
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
