paramours

Noun

paramour (plural paramours)

1. (archaic) A person who is the object of one's love, especially in an affair or romance; a lover; also, a sexual partner.
   • No ſolace could her Paramour intreat / Her once to ſhovv, ne court, nor dalliaunce, / But vvith bent lovvring brovves, as ſhe vvould threat, / She ſcould, and frovvned vvith frovvard countenaunce, / Vnvvorthy of faire Ladies comely gouernaunce.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 35, page 215

   Synonyms:

   admirer, adorer, baby, beloved, courter, crush, darling, enamorado, flame, follower

2. (broadly, dated) A person (especially someone who is not one's spouse) with whom one has an illicit or secret affair; also (Scotland, US, law), one with whom a married person has an adulterous affair.
   • to run away with a paramour
3. (broadly, historical) A woman who is the object of a knight's love, and who he fights for.
   • It is the leaſt of his famous aduentures, that hee vndertaketh to be Greenes [Robert Greene's?] aduocate: […] He may declare his deere affection to his Paramour; or his pure honeſtye to the vvorld; […]1593, Gabriell Haruey [i.e., Gabriel Harvey], Pierces Supererogation: Or A New Prayse of the Old Asse. A Preparative to Certaine Larger Discourses, Intituled Nashes S. Fame, London: […] Iohn Wolfe...
4. (broadly, obsolete) God as the object of a person's devotion or love.
   • Clad you with yͤ ſilke of ſinceritie, with yͤ ſaten [satin] of ſanctitie, with the purple of probitie. Thus prune and pricke vp your ſelues, and God himſelfe ſhall be your paramour, ⁊c.1581, Iohn Marbeck [i.e., John Merbecke], “Of Womens Apparell”, in A Booke of Notes and Common Places, with Their Expositions, Collected and Gathered out of the Workes of Diuers Singular Writers, and...

See all 7 meanings of paramour