romance

Noun (1)

romance (countable and uncountable, plural romances)

1. An intimate relationship between two people; a love affair.
   • Everybody's working for the weekend
     Everybody wants a new romance.1981, Paul Dean, Matt Frenette, Mike Reno, “Working for the Weekend”, in Get Lucky, performed by Loverboy
2. A strong obsession or attachment for something or someone.
3. Idealized love which is pure or beautiful.
4. A story, novel, film, etc., centred around an idealized love relationship.
5. A story relating to chivalry; a story involving knights, heroes, adventures, quests, etc.
   • `Will you undertake the task? We give you complete freedom, and as a reward you will, we believe, have the credit of presenting to the world the most wonderful history, as distinguished from romance, that its records can show.'1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
6. A tale of high adventure.
   • Could one have known the past histories of some of the oddly-selected couples who shared everything in common, many a romance might have been written during what, to all outward appearances, was a dull and prosaic time to most lookers-on!1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 152
7. A mysterious, exciting, or fascinating quality.
   • the romance of cruising down the Nile.
   • There's a comforting romance to the space—the chalky white walls, the soaring ceilings, the natural light flooding in through the windows, all of which create a warm, flattering glow.2026 May, Stacie Stukin, “Historic Opportunity”, in Architectural Digest, volume 83, number 4, page 74
8. A literary or filmic genre about idealized love.
9. An embellished account of something; an idealized lie.
10. An adventure, or series of extraordinary events, resembling those narrated in romances.
    • His life was a romance.
11. A dreamy, imaginative habit of mind; a disposition to ignore what is real.
    • She was so full of romance she would forget what she was supposed to be doing.
12. A sentimental piece of music; a romanza.

Verb

romance (third-person singular simple present romances, present participle romancing, simple past and past participle romanced)

1. (transitive) To woo; to court.
   • A female Shepard can romance bisexual Yeoman Kelly Chambers, but doing so does not yield a Paramour achievement or an implied sex scene the way that romancing ‘official’ interests does. Similarly, the player can attempt to romance the Asari Samara or her Ardat-Yakshi daughter Morinth, but the...2015 November 15, Meghan Blythe Adams, “Renegade Sex: Compulsory Sexuality and Charmed Magic Circles in the Mass Effect series”, in Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association...
   • In the ghetto, the gentle Barber romances a defiant washerwoman, Hannah, who is played by Chaplin's wife at the time, Paulette Goddard.2021 February 5, Nicholas Barber, “The Great Dictator: The film that dared to laugh at Hitler”, in BBC

   Synonyms:

   make love

2. (intransitive) To write or tell romantic stories, poetry, letters, etc.
3. (intransitive) To talk extravagantly and imaginatively; to build castles in the air.

Noun (2) capitalized: Romance

UK/ɹə(ʊ)ˈman(t)s/US/ɹoʊˈmæn(t)s/

Romance (uncountable)

1. The group of languages and cultures which are derived from Vulgar Latin.
   • The Romance languages are normally grouped along broad geographical lines into Italo-Romance (Italian dialects, with a standard based on Tuscan); Gallo-Romance (French and Provençal); Hispano-Romance (Castilian Spanish, Catalan as less widely recognized standard, and Portuguese); Rhaeto-Romance...2024, Wolfgang Oliver! Cirilo de Melo, Latin Linguistics: An Introduction, Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, page 59f

Adjective capitalized: Romance

UK/ɹə(ʊ)ˈman(t)s/US/ɹoʊˈmæn(t)s/

Romance

1. Of or dealing with languages or cultures derived from Roman influence and Latin: French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Galician, Romanian, Catalan, Occitan, etc.
   • In this paper we will concentrate on the problem posed by Iberian Romance languages (i.e. Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish), …Eulàlia Bonet and Joan Mascaró, On the representation of contrasting rhotics, in: 1997, Fernando Martínez-Gil, Alfonso Morales-Front (eds.), Issues in the Phonology and Morphology of the Major...
   • This book is a fully updated edition of a work first published in 1986. It is intended as a comprehensive work on both current and historical phonetic transcription practice. It covers the phonetic symbol usages of such major traditions as the early Amerindianist work of the Boas school; the...2013, Geoffrey K. Pullum, William A. Ladusaw, “Preface”, in Phonetic Symbol Guide, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN

   Synonyms:

   Romanic, Romantic