"L" Word Origins

lovebird

Origin

From love + bird.

lovebug

Origin

From love + bug. From their mating behavior, remaining paired up for several days during copulation.

Lovecraft

Origin

Compound of love + craft.

loved

Middle English

From Middle English loved, luvd, from Old English lufode, first and third person singular past indicative of lufian; and Middle English loved, iloved, from Old English ġelufod, past participle of lufian; both equivalent to love + -ed.

loveful

Origin

From Middle English luveful; equivalent to love + -ful.

Lovejoy

Old French

From Old English lufu ("love") + Old French ioie ("joy").

Lovelace

Origin · 1748

From Robert Lovelace, the charming but manipulative seducer in Samuel Richardson's 1748 novel "Clarissa" — his name became a byword for the type.

loveless

Origin

From love plus the suffix -less, "without."

loveliness

Middle English

From Middle English luflynes; equivalent to lovely + -ness.

loveling

Origin

From love + -ling. Compare West Frisian leaveling (“darling”), Dutch lieveling (“darling, sweetheart”), Afrikaans liefling (“darling”), German Liebling (“darling”); perhaps calqued, inspired, or reinforced by the term.

Lovell

Anglo-Norman

From Anglo-Norman lou ("wolf") + -el (diminutive suffix), meaning "little wolf".

lovelorn

Origin

From love plus lorn, an old word meaning "lost" or "forsaken."

lovely

Old English

From Old English luflic, "loving, amiable," from love plus the suffix -ly.

lovemaking

Origin

From love + making.

lover

Middle English

From Middle English lovere, luffer, lufere, equivalent to love + -er.

loverboy

Origin

From lover + boy.

loveship

Origin

From love + -ship.

lovesick

Origin

From love plus sick, describing love as if it were an illness.

lovesome

Origin

From Middle English lufsom, lufsum, from Old English lufsum (“loving, lovable, pleasant”), equivalent to love + -some.

Lovett

Anglo-Norman

From Anglo-Norman louet ("wolf-cub"), a diminutive of lou ("wolf").

lovey

Origin

From love + -y.

Lovin

Origin

Spelling variant of Loven; see Lown.

loving

Middle English

Inherited from Middle English lovyng(e) (“love”), inherited from Old English lufung. By surface analysis, love + -ing.

lovingness

Origin

From loving + -ness.

low

Old Norse

From Old Norse lagr, "low, lying flat," related to the verb "lie."

low self-esteem

Latin

Esteem comes via Old French estimer from Latin aestimare, to value or appraise, so self-esteem is literally the value you place on yourself.

low-hanging fruit

English

A metaphor from harvesting: the fruit within arm's reach is picked first because it needs no ladder.

low-key

Origin

From low + key.

lowball

Origin

American railroad term that described one of two positions of the ball of a ball signal. Compare highball.

lowbrow

Origin

A bahuvrihi compound of low + brow. An Americanism whose first use appears c. 1902. Refers to the (by that time discredited) pseudoscience of phrenology, which suggested that a person of low intelligence and sophistication would possess a lower brow-line than someone of greater intelligence and sophistication.

lowdown

Origin · 1900

From low plus down, originally meaning "humble," later shifting to slang for secret/inside information by the early 1900s.

Lowe

German

* As an English and Scottish surname, spelling variant of Low. * As a German surname, spelling variant of Löwe, Loewe. * As a Jewish surname/Yiddish surname, from German Löwe (“lion”). * Also as a Jewish surname, Germanized from Levy. * As a French-derived surname, from Old French lou (“wolf”). * As a Norse-derived surname, from Old Norse lágr (“low”) (as in "short"). * As a native English-derived surname, from Old English hlāw (“hill”) (a burial ground in this case). * Also a petname (clipping) of Laurence/Lawrence.

Lowell

Old French

From Old French lou + -el, meaning "little wolf".

lowen

Origin

Formed from "low" plus the verb-forming suffix "-en", on the same pattern as "widen" or "deepen."

lower

Origin

The comparative form of low, formed with the suffix -er.

lowercase

Origin

From the noun phrase lower case, which itself consists of an adjective modifying a noun; when used as a noun adjunct then, to render its syntactical function clearer and simpler, it is written as a single word or with a hyphen as a sort of chunking.

lowering

Middle English

c. 1600, "descend, sink, grow less or lower" (intransitive), from lower (adj.), comparative of low (adj.). Transitive meaning "let down, cause to descend" attested from 1650s. Related: Lowered; lowering. In the transitive sense "to cause to descend" the older verb was low. From Middle English lahghenn, (c. 1200), which continued in use into the 18c.

Lowers

Origin

Patronymic from Lower.

lowery

Origin

From lower (“to frown”) + -y.

lowland

Origin

From low + land.

lowlander

Origin

From lowland + -er.

Lowlands

Origin

Specific application of lowlands, due to its comparatively low altitude relative to the Highlands.

lowlife

Origin

Simply "low" plus "life" — someone living on the low, disreputable end of society.

lowly

Origin

From "low" plus the adjective/adverb suffix "-ly."

lowry

Origin

Related to "lorry," the British word for a truck.

lox

Yiddish

Borrowed from Yiddish "laks," meaning salmon — closely related to the English word "lax," an older word for the same fish.

loy

Irish

From the Irish word "láí," meaning spade.

loyal

Latin

Borrowed via Middle French from Old French "loial," ultimately from Latin "legalis" — the same root that gives us "legal." "Loyal" and "legal" are historical twins.