Latin
amor
amor
amor · AH-mor (classical /ˈa.mɔr/; later /ˈa.mor/)
love
What the gloss loses: English “love” has been asked to do civic, sexual, divine, and familial work at once, partly because Latin amor already did some of that work, and Christianity then argued about whether amor, caritas, or dilectio was the right name for the love of God. Reading Catullus as if he meant what a greeting card means is a failure of Latin, not a translation of it.
Etymology
Latin amor, amōris, from the verb amāre, “to love.” De Vaan and others leave amāre without a demonstrated Indo-European etymology. A connection to infantile ama / amma (a nursery word for mother) has been suggested and remains speculative. It is not related to Greek ἔρως, nor securely to Sanskrit kāma.
Folk pairings of amor with “armor” or with Italian amore as if the Latin were a romance language’s invention reverse the history. Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian words for love are the descendants, not the source.
Morphology · Masculine noun, third declension: amor, amōris. Verb amāre (first conjugation). Agent: amātor, amātrix. Personified: Amor, counterpart of Greek Eros, also called Cupīdō (“desire,” from cupere).
Historical use
In Latin love elegy (Catullus, Sulpicia, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid), amor is a condition one serves: a militia, a sickness, a god with a boy’s face. Odi et amo, “I hate and I love”, is not a paradox Catullus solves. It is the report.
Outside elegy, amor is wider. One may have amor for a spouse, a child, a friend, a place, fame, money, wisdom. Cicero can speak of amor patriae. Lucretius, following Epicurus, treats amor as a bodily disturbance to be managed. The word does not belong to the poets alone.
Roman religion and law also know a different seriousness: pietas, fides, affectio maritalis. Amor is not the legal ground of marriage. That fact matters. A Roman marriage could exist without what later Europe would insist on calling love; Pliny’s letters to Calpurnia are moving partly because he writes amor into a form that did not require it.
Semantic range
- Love, desire, the passion of attachment.
- The god Amor / Cupid.
- Strong liking (amor laudis, love of praise).
- In the plural, amores: love affairs, or the loved person.
Semantic change
Through the Romance languages, amor / amore / amour became the default word for the whole field English calls love. Courtly love, Christian caritas debates, and modern romance all inhabit descendants of this noun. The Latin word itself was never as specialized as English “romance,” nor as domestic as English “love you.”
Source · Catullus 85: Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. / Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
One related story: Kiss Me Again
Old French amour and Occitan amor (as in the troubadours’ fin’amor) are the same word after centuries of use among people who had read the elegists and then wanted something the elegists did not have: a code.
An open question
When a language makes amor its common word for love, what happens to the loves that are not passionate?