Word.ws English Dictionary

old flame

old flame noun: a previous boyfriend or girlfriend; a former romantic or sexual partner, especially one for whom one still has romantic feelings.

Noun

old flame (plural old flames)

  1. (idiomatic) A previous boyfriend or girlfriend; a former romantic or sexual partner, especially one for whom one still has romantic feelings.
    • There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame...1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 1, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC
    • "Edith Bradin's coming," said some one to Gordon. "Didn't she used to be an old flame of yours? Aren't you both from Harrisburg?"1922, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, “(please specify the page)”, in Tales of the Jazz Age, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC

Examples of old flame in a sentence

  • Lolly Mulberry, a notorious playgirl, was an old flame of Tudy’s and an old enemy of Materkins’.1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 50:
  • But Philip still yearns for an old flame: Schiffer, an Oscar-winning actress.2008 September 25, Lev Grossman, “Text and the City”, in Time:

Forms of old flame

pluralold flames

Questions about old flame

What does old flame mean?
Old flame means a previous boyfriend or girlfriend; a former romantic or sexual partner, especially one for whom one still has romantic feelings.
How do you use old flame in a sentence?
Lolly Mulberry, a notorious playgirl, was an old flame of Tudy’s and an old enemy of Materkins’.
What part of speech is old flame?
Old flame is a noun.
What is the plural of old flame?
The plural of old flame is old flames.

Words near old flame in the dictionary

  1. old fellows
  2. Old Fig Garden
  3. old finger
  4. old fingers
  5. Old Firm
  6. old flame
  7. old flames
  8. old fogey
  9. old fogies
  10. old fogy
  11. old folks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: old flame (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: En-au-old flame.ogg.

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