# romance

Pronunciation: US say "roh-MANS" /ɹoʊˈmæns/; UK say "ruh-MANS" /ɹəˈmæns/

## Noun

1. A love affair; an intimate attachment between two people.
   - Simple: A close, loving relationship between two people.
   - _Their summer romance ended when she went back to college in September._
   - _After the divorce, he told friends he wasn't ready for a new romance._
2. A story, novel, or film centered on an idealized love relationship; such stories considered together as a genre.
   - Simple: A book or film about people falling in love, or all such books and films as a type.
   - _After two thrillers, she switched to romance and never looked back._
   - _The festival added a romance category this year, alongside horror and science fiction._
3. Love imagined as pure, beautiful, and ideal.
   - Simple: A pure, beautiful kind of love that seems perfect.
   - _He was a cynic who thought romance existed only in songs and greeting cards._
   - _Years of bad dates hadn't killed her belief in romance._
4. A quality that makes something seem mysterious, exciting, or fascinating.
   - Simple: An exciting or mysterious feeling that a place, thing, or way of life has.
   - _Long-distance trains still carry a romance that airports cannot match._
   - _Part of the romance of the old lighthouse is that no one knows who built it._
8. A story of exciting, larger-than-life adventures, especially one involving knights, heroes, and quests.
   - Simple: A story about exciting adventures, often involving knights, heroes, and dangerous journeys.
   - _Her thesis compares two medieval romances about the knights of King Arthur._
   - _In the romance, the hero must cross a bridge as sharp as a sword to reach the queen._
9. A strong attachment to, or obsession with, something or someone.
   - Simple: A very strong love for something or someone that you can't stop thinking about.
   - _America's long romance with the automobile shaped the way its cities grew._
   - _Her romance with Paris began on a semester abroad and never faded._
10. An adventure or series of extraordinary events in real life, like those told in old tales of adventure.
   - Simple: A real adventure or a string of amazing events, like something from an exciting story.
   - _Their grandfather's life, from stowaway to sea captain, was a romance._
   - _The expedition became a romance of shipwreck, mutiny, and rescue that the newspapers followed for months._
11. A tender, sentimental piece of music, also called a romanza.
   - Simple: A gentle piece of music full of tender, loving feeling.
   - _The violinist closed the recital with a romance by Beethoven._
   - _The concerto's slow movement is a romance, simple and songlike after the stormy opening._
12. An embellished account of something, or a lie that paints it in an idealized light.
   - Simple: A dressed-up or made-up story that makes something sound better than the truth.
   - _His tales of the war were pure romance; he had spent most of it behind a desk in Ohio._
   - _The company's founding story is a romance: there was no garage and no lucky break._
13. A dreamy, imaginative habit of mind that tends to ignore what is real.
   - Simple: A dreamy way of thinking that makes someone ignore real life.
   - _There was too much romance in him to settle for a steady office job._
   - _One muddy winter on the farm cured her of her romance about country life._

## Adjective · Romance

5. Relating to the languages and cultures that grew out of Latin and Roman influence, such as French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, and Catalan.
   - Simple: Having to do with the languages and cultures that came from Latin, like Spanish, French, and Italian.
   - _She chairs the department of Romance studies at a large state university._
   - _Much of the Romance vocabulary in English came in through Norman French._

## Verb

6. To pursue someone romantically in the hope of winning their love; to court.
   - Simple: To try to win someone's love.
   - _In the film, a shy baker romances the widow who lives above his shop._
   - _Players who romance the ship's pilot unlock an extra ending._

## Noun · Romance

7. The family of languages descended from Vulgar Latin, considered as a whole.
   - Simple: The family of languages that came from the everyday Latin of ancient times.
   - _Linguists often divide Romance into eastern and western branches._
   - _Her book traces how the Latin future tense was rebuilt across Romance._

## Other meanings

- (verb) To indulge in extravagant, imaginative talk, spinning daydreams and impractical schemes.
- (verb) To write or tell romantic stories, poetry, letters, and the like.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–4, 6, 8–13** — Latin rōmānus ("a Roman") gave the adjective rōmānicus ("Roman") and the Medieval and Vulgar Latin adverb rōmānicē ("in the Roman language"). In Anglo-Norman and Old French this became romanz or romans, the everyday language of France as opposed to Latin, and Middle English borrowed it as romauns or roumance. Romansch is a doublet.
**Meanings 5, 7** — From Old French romanz ("the everyday language of France"), from Late Latin rōmānicē ("in the Roman language"), from Latin rōmānicus ("Roman"). In the 17th century it was extended to all languages descended from Latin.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/romance (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).