Supermarkets promoting ‘home cooking you know they’ll love’. Emails promising ‘endless love with this limited offer’. Radio stations playing love songs on loop.
There’s no escaping Cupid’s favourite four letter word at this time of year.
But February 14th isn’t the only day love gets bandied about willy-nilly.
We use it to describe how we feel about pressed milk curds on grilled bread.
“I love cheese on toast.”
We express our mild amusement at pithy social media posts with it,
“Love this, babe!”
Such is our collective onomatomania (an obsession with a particular word) that what once meant a profound connection or deep affection, has become a catch-all term for even the tiniest positive feeling.
Love is bland.
But it doesn’t have to be. There are plenty of other words to get infatuated with.
The meaning of love
The first step in making sure the meaning of love isn’t lost, is to understand what kind of love we’re feeling.
The Ancient Greeks believed there were six types.
Storgē: (stor-gay)
The joy of your child taking their first steps. The happiness of cuddling on the couch for movie-night. Storgē is the natural affection you feel for family. Until you fall out over what film to watch, that is.
Philia: (feel-ee-ah)
Despite leaving your WhatsApps on read for weeks before cancelling plans last minute, we can’t help having an unbreakable bond with our mates.
This is thanks to philia, the feeling of love we have towards lifelong friends.
Erōs: (eeuh-ros)
Shagging, screwing, nailing, banging, bonking, knocking boots, making the beast with two backs and doing two-person push-ups.
There are countless ways to describe the act of sexual love. Erōs is a subtle way to describe the feeling.
Especially when “you make me horny” won’t suffice.
Agapē: (ag-ar-pay)
God loves you no matter how much of a dirty devil you’ve been. Because The Almighty blesses you with agapē – unconditional or divine love.
Xenia: (zen-ee-ah)
Essentially the Ancient Greek concept of hospitality, xenia is the love we show for our guests.
Come in, take a seat, have a bite; make yourself at home. But for the love of God, don’t stay too long, we’ve made plans for an early night of bumping uglies.
Philautia: (fill-aff-tee-ah)
Meaning “regard for one’s own happiness or advantage”, philautia is the act of self-love.
Whether it’s a human necessity or a moral flaw has been the subject of mass debate for years.
Whatever your opinion, I’m sticking with mine. Because I’m philodoxical.
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Other types of love.
To be philodoxical is to be in love with one’s own opinions. The French call it amour propre – showing high self-esteem or vanity.
We’re back to describing LinkedIn gurus again, aren’t we?
I don’t know about you but all the grandstanding I see on that platform makes me feel nothing but apanthropy – a love of solitude and an aversion to other people.
Apart from my wife, of course, who I love dearly.
Though I have to be careful not to come across as uxorious. It’s such a turn-off when men are excessively submissive to the missus.
I don’t want to ruin my chance of taking ol’ one eye to the optometrist later.
With that in mind, let’s finish with some words that’ll add some oomph to your Valentine’s overtures.
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Logophiles (word-lovers) like you and I, would never look into our lover’s eyes and utter ‘fancy a quickie?’
We prefer to apply all of our duende (dweh-deh) to our seduction technique. It’s this power to attract through magnetic charm that sets us apart from cheesy chatter-uppers.
So when we’re overcome with basorexia – the sudden desire to kiss someone – we don’t get schmaltzy. Instead, we enthral the subject of our limerence with a more linguistic lilt to our love language. Combining Arabic and Welsh expressions of love, we titillate them with our tongue by saying
“My darling, ya’aburnee in a cwtch.”
meaning:
‘My darling, bury me in more than a hug.”
To which they reply before rolling over ‘Not tonight, dear. I heard so many strange words today, it’s given me thinkache. Na night.”
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