Word.ws English Dictionary

enemies-to-lovers

enemies-to-lovers noun: a trope in romance fiction (particularly fan fiction) involving the development of an antagonistic relationship into romantic love.

Noun

enemies-to-lovers (uncountable)

  1. (attributive, often) A trope in romance fiction (particularly fan fiction) involving the development of an antagonistic relationship into romantic love.
    • “And for everyone rooting for this little enemies-to-lovers tale...”2013, Maisey Yates, The Couple Who Fooled the World, Mills & Boon, page 42
    • I know that she never falls asleep before 2 a.m. and her favourite fanfic trope is enemies-to-lovers and she’s secretly a fan of Ariana Grande.2018, Alice Oseman, I Was Born for This, unnumbered page

Examples of enemies-to-lovers in a sentence

  • And that’s because Go Hex Yourself is a romantic masterpiece, and the sexiest, most bewitching take on enemies-to-lovers I’ve read in ages.2023, Ali Hazelwood, praise blurb in Jessica Clare, What the Hex, page 1
  • So now I see, like, when a book has enemies-to-lovers, I see it, and I'm like, oh-oh.2023, Tara, quoted Fabienne Silberstein-Bamford, "The 'Fanfic Lens': Fan Writing's Impact on Media Consumption", Volume 19, Issue 2, March...

Forms of enemies-to-lovers

alternative formenemies to lovers
alternative formETL

Questions about enemies-to-lovers

What does enemies-to-lovers mean?
Enemies-to-lovers means a trope in romance fiction (particularly fan fiction) involving the development of an antagonistic relationship into romantic love.
How do you use enemies-to-lovers in a sentence?
And that’s because Go Hex Yourself is a romantic masterpiece, and the sexiest, most bewitching take on enemies-to-lovers I’ve read in ages.
What part of speech is enemies-to-lovers?
Enemies-to-lovers is a noun.

Words near enemies-to-lovers in the dictionary

  1. enemied
  2. enemies
  3. enemies of the people
  4. enemies of the state
  5. enemies-to-friends-to-lovers
  6. enemies-to-lovers
  7. enemy
  8. enemy action
  9. enemy combatant
  10. enemy combatants
  11. enemy image

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: enemies-to-lovers (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)-Sapaa-enemies-to-lovers.wav.

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