Word.ws English Dictionary

lofe

lofe noun: an offer; choice; an opportunity; chance.

Noun

lofe (plural lofes)

  1. (Northern England, West-Midlands) An offer; choice; an opportunity; chance.
    • "Yance I hed t' lofe an' I'd luck to say no, an' I niver hed t' lofe ageàn."—Said by an elderly spinster.1869, Alexander Craig Gibson, The Folk-Speech of Cumberland and Some Districts Adjacent, page 212

Verb

lofe (third-person singular simple present lofes, present participle lofing, simple past and past participle lofed)

  1. (UK, dialectal, obsolete, transitive) To praise; commend.
  2. (Northern England, West-Midlands, transitive) To offer; offer at a price; expose for sale.
    • Ah'd lofed him it an' he wadn't tak 't.1899, William Dickinson, Edward William Prevost, Simon Dickson Brown, A Glossary of the Words and Phrases Pertaining to the Dialect of Cumberland, page 202

Forms of lofe

Noun
plurallofes
alternative formloff
alternative formloave
Verb
third-person singular presentlofes
present participlelofing
past participlelofed
pastlofed
alternative formlove

Origin of lofe

Inherited from Middle English lofe, lof (“praise, price”), from Old English lof (“praise, glory, repute, song of praise, hymn”), from Proto-West Germanic *lob, from Proto-Germanic *lubą (“praise, permission”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- (“to love, like”) (and thence a distant cognate of English love). Cognate with Scots lofe (“an offer”), North Frisian lof (“praise”), Dutch lof (“praise, glory, commendation”), German Lob (“praise, commendation, tribute”), Icelandic lof (“praise”). For semantic development, perhaps compare etymology of praise and its senses.

Inherited from Middle English loven (“to praise, set a price on”), from Old English lofian (“to praise, exalt, appraise, value, set a price on”), from Proto-West Germanic *lobōn, from Proto-Germanic *lubōną (“to praise, vow”), from Proto-Indo-European *lewbʰ- (“to love, like”). Cognate with Scots loave (“to offer at a price”), North Frisian lowe (“to vow, swear”), Dutch loven (“to praise, bless, commend”), German loben (“to praise, laud, commend”), Icelandic lofa (“to promise, praise, allow”).

Questions about lofe

What does lofe mean?
Lofe means an offer; choice; an opportunity; chance.
What part of speech is lofe?
Lofe can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of lofe?
The plural of lofe is lofes.

Words near lofe in the dictionary

  1. lof
  2. Lofa
  3. Lofaro
  4. Lofaros
  5. Lofaso
  6. lofe
  7. lofemizole
  8. lofendazam
  9. lofentanil
  10. lofepramine
  11. lofer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lofe (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: “lofe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lofe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.