Word.ws English Dictionary

dear heart

dear heart noun: term of affection; sweetheart.

Noun

dear heart (plural dear hearts)

  1. Term of affection; sweetheart.

Interjection

  1. (archaic) Expressing surprise or emphasis.
    • “Dead — aye, sure enough he’s dead and gone below,” said the fellow with the bandage; “but if ever sperrit walked, it would be Flint’s. Dear heart, but he died bad, did Flint!”1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC
    • "Dear heart!" exclaimed Mrs. Plummer soon after, as something rolled over the bare white boards from the folds of a dress she was vigorously shaking, before replacing it in the drawer, "how did she come by pearls?"1891, Maxwell Gray, In the Heart of the Storm, volume 2, page 119

Forms of dear heart

pluraldear hearts

Questions about dear heart

What does dear heart mean?
Dear heart means term of affection; sweetheart.
What part of speech is dear heart?
Dear heart can be a noun or an interjection.
What is the plural of dear heart?
The plural of dear heart is dear hearts.

Words near dear heart in the dictionary

  1. dear
  2. Dear Abby
  3. Dear Colleague letter
  4. dear diary
  5. dear God
  6. dear heart
  7. dear hearts
  8. Dear Jane letter
  9. Dear Jane letters
  10. Dear John
  11. Dear John letter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dear heart (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-dear heart.wav.

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