What does lovesickness mean?
Lovesickness is the distress, grief, or longing that can accompany romantic love, especially when the loved person is absent or a relationship cannot be fulfilled. The word may suggest a powerful emotional or physical disturbance, but it is also often used playfully or nostalgically, as in memories of a first love or a long separation. It has a strongly literary and romantic quality, making it more evocative than a general term such as sadness. Lovesickness differs from ordinary disappointment because love itself is the source of the distress: the sufferer is affected by attachment, desire, uncertainty, or separation rather than by a lost object or failed plan alone. Although sometimes treated as a joke, the condition has long been recognized in literature as a serious source of suffering. The word remains useful because it identifies a particular kind of emotional ache and gives that experience a concise, culturally familiar name.
nounEmotional distress caused by romantic love, especially grief or anxiety arising from separation from, uncertainty about, or the impossibility of having the loved person.
- The painful distress or longing associated with romantic love, particularly when a loved one is absent or the relationship is unfulfilled.
"Her letters were filled with lovesickness, yet she found comfort in the knowledge that he remembered her."
"A bout of lovesickness made him lose all interest in the celebration."
"The novel treats lovesickness as both an illness of the heart and a source of lyrical inspiration."
The noun is normally treated as uncountable. A plural form is unnecessary in ordinary usage.
"A deep lovesickness settled over him after she left."
Lovesickness gives a familiar ache its own name, turning the ache of missing someone into something shared, recognized, and almost beautifully expressible.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of lovesickness
Lovesickness is an English compound formed from love and sickness. Love descends from Old English lufu, while sickness was formed within English from sick with the suffix -ness; the compound has been attested since the late sixteenth century. Related forms such as lovesick, lovable, and lovely belong to the same wider lexical family, although they are not simple grammatical variants of the noun.
How lovesickness is actually used
Lovesickness is common in literary, romantic, and informal contexts. It often carries a mixture of suffering and affectionate exaggeration, although it can describe intense emotional or physical symptoms associated with romantic separation.