Word.ws English Dictionary

tough loving

tough loving is the present participle and gerund of tough love.

Meaning of tough love

Noun

tough love (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) The compassionate use of stringent disciplinary measures, to attempt to improve someone's behavior.
    • [H]e found himself surrounded by a circle of caring friends and relatives who told him one by one that they loved him but could not continue to live with him or be his friend the way he was. As one of his closest friends recalled, it was a show of tough love.1995 April 12, Jane E. Brody, “Personal Health: Intervening with someone who drinks too much”, in New York Times, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2017, retrieved 06 Apr 2015

Questions about tough loving

What is tough loving the present participle and gerund of?
Tough loving is the present participle and gerund of tough love.

Words near tough loving in the dictionary

  1. tough guys
  2. tough it out
  3. tough love
  4. tough loved
  5. tough loves
  6. tough loving
  7. tough luck
  8. tough noogies
  9. tough nut
  10. tough nut to crack
  11. tough nuts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tough loving (page history and authors); tough love (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: “tough loving.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tough_loving. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.