inamorata
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of inamorata
1645–55; < Italian innamorata (feminine); see inamorato
Explanation
If you want to sound a little old-fashioned, you might refer to your girlfriend as your inamorata. A woman you love in a romantic way is your inamorata, although it's not a very common term these days. It would be a little startling if your friend said, "I'd like to introduce you to my inamorata," though you'd know he meant "the woman I love." The male version of an inamorata is inamorato, which is even more rarely used. Both words come from the Italian innamorare, "to fall in love."
Vocabulary lists containing inamorata
The Murder at the Vicarage
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am, ami, amor
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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.
See Examples For:
Consider what you will do if you decide to leave your partner and your inamorata doesn’t leave theirs.
From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2019
“Children of a Lesser God,” in which a teacher at a school for the deaf trains his inamorata to speak, made a brief return to Broadway, with a mixed-race cast.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 17, 2018
That would be the same crazed, cuckolded Cardenio whom Don Quixote met in Chapter 23 of the novel, then helped reunite with his inamorata a hundred pages later.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2016
An earlier example of such presidential kibitzing, the Times notes, involved David Petraeus, the former CIA director who shared classified information with his inamorata.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2015
While he stood at one of the windows, looking gloomily out on the autumn landscape, he heard the voices of 'Dolf and his spinster inamorata in the area below.
From A Noble Woman by Stephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
A visit from Cecily, accompanied by one of her inamoratas, riveted Harrison: The couple dressed alike in black, shared a single seat at the dinner table and ate from a single plate.
From New York Times ● Oct. 17, 2018
Fernanda Rohd and Melody Hollis suggest opposite sides of the same essential coin as two very different inamoratas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2016
I ask when he notes that many of his inamoratas have developed careers off the sheen of his celebrity.
From Forbes ● Oct. 18, 2012
Preparatory School youths who telephone Spence inamoratas find they may not speak to them.
From Time Magazine Archive
They never inform us, like our inamoratas sometimes do, that we are not nearly so nice as we used to be.
From Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
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.
