Word.ws English Dictionary

friends-to-lovers

friends-to-lovers noun: a trope in romance fiction (particularly fan fiction) involving the development of a friendship into romantic love.

Noun

friends-to-lovers (uncountable)

  1. (attributive, often) A trope in romance fiction (particularly fan fiction) involving the development of a friendship into romantic love.
    • When I started the Mafia Moguls series, I knew I wanted a friends-to-lovers trope—one of my absolute favorite storylines.2016, Jules Bennett, From Friend to Fake Fiancé, page 2
    • Between the classic friends-to-lovers trope, incredible dialogue, and undeniable chemistry between Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, this is one film that you MUST watch.2021 February 5, Jessica Khorana, “The Top Ten RomComs To Watch On Valentine's Day”, in The Innis Herald, University of Toronto, page 11

Forms of friends-to-lovers

alternative formfriends to lovers

Questions about friends-to-lovers

What does friends-to-lovers mean?
Friends-to-lovers means a trope in romance fiction (particularly fan fiction) involving the development of a friendship into romantic love.
What part of speech is friends-to-lovers?
Friends-to-lovers is a noun.

Words near friends-to-lovers in the dictionary

  1. friends of mine
  2. friends of ours
  3. friends of the court
  4. friends with benefits
  5. friends-in-law
  6. friends-to-lovers
  7. Friendsgiving
  8. Friendsgivings
  9. friendship
  10. friendship bench
  11. friendship benches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: friends-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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Cite this entry: “friends-to-lovers.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/friends-to-lovers. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.