love

The word "love" is used for those deeply felt emotions that bind people together. There’s romantic love, the love of a parent towards a child, the love children feel for their parents and their siblings, and there’s spiritual love that people express through their religion.

• Mirna and Pedro love each other.
• They love their children.
• They fell in love and got married 20 years ago. (This sentence uses "love" as a noun.)
• Their household is filled with love.

The word "love" is also used when describing ordinary things that have nothing to do with romance or family relationships:

• Jerry loves his new car.
• Amina loves her job.
• We love going to the movies.
• What’s not to love about this beautiful house?
• I love chocolate ice cream.

The use of the future tense is often used when "love" is a verb:

• She’ll love those earrings.
• You’re going to love living in New York.
• I think they’re going to love having a baby.

You’ll also hear "would love" in conditional sentences:

• I would love to help you, but I can’t.
• They would love to be here today, but they have to be at work.
• She would love to have another baby.

To use "love" in continuous tenses is not grammatically correct; however, recently it has become popular among Americans to do it anyway.

• She’s loving her new cell phone.
• They’re loving being together all the time.
• He was loving his job until he got a new supervisor.
• I’m loving it. (You might recognize this from McDonald’s commercials.)

I recommend that you avoid using "love" this way. But it is possible to use "loving" as a gerund or as an adjective:

• Loving you is easy. (The subject is "loving.")
• Tina is a loving wife. ("Loving" is an adjective.)
• The shelter found a loving home for the lost dog.

It’s common to use "love" as an adjective for the following things: love letters, love songs, and love poems.

It’s also common to use "love" as a noun:

• The love they feel for each other is very strong.
• Bob lost his job, but he has the love of his family to fall back on.
• After hours of making love, the couple ordered a pizza. (make love = sexual activity)
• A lot of love goes into her cooking.
• Cindy couldn’t make it to the wedding, but she sent her love in the form of a big bouquet of flowers.
• He often thinks of his long-lost love.

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This page was first published on February 14, 2013. It was updated on February 14, 2017.