n.
- A love affair.
- Ardent emotional attachment or involvement between people; love: They kept the romance alive in their marriage for 35 years.
- A strong, sometimes short-lived attachment, fascination, or enthusiasm for something: a childhood romance with the sea.
- A mysterious or fascinating quality or appeal, as of something adventurous, heroic, or strangely beautiful: "These fine old guns often have a romance clinging to them" (Richard Jeffries).
- A long medieval narrative in prose or verse that tells of the adventures and heroic exploits of chivalric heroes: an Arthurian romance.
- A long fictitious tale of heroes and extraordinary or mysterious events, usually set in a distant time or place.
- The class of literature constituted by such tales.
- An artistic work, such as a novel, story, or film, that deals with sexual love, especially in an idealized form.
- The class or style of such works.
- A fictitiously embellished account or explanation: We have been given speculation and romance instead of the facts.
- Music. A lyrical, tender, usually sentimental song or short instrumental piece.
- Romance The Romance languages.
Romance Of, relating to, or being any of the languages that developed from Latin, including Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish.
v., -manced, -manc·ing, -manc·es. (rō-măns') v.intr.
- To invent, write, or tell romances.
- To think or behave in a romantic manner.
- To make love to; court or woo.
- To have a love affair with.
[Middle English, from Old French romans, romance, work written in French, from Vulgar Latin *rōmānicē (scrībere), (to write) in the vernacular, from Latin Rōmānicus, Roman, from Rōmānus. See Roman.]
romancer ro·manc'er n.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
