amour

noun

ə-ˈmu̇r 

ä-,

a-

: a usually illicit love affair

wrote of his amours in his memoirs

also : lover

Synonyms

• affair
• affaire
• fling
• love
• love affair
• romance

Examples of amour in a Sentence

memoirs devoted to accounts of his amours

in her memoirs the diva candidly recalls her amours with some of opera's best-known tenors and baritones

Recent Examples on the Web

The result is at once a ghost story, a tale of amour fou, a settling of accounts, and, one senses, a deeply personal act of expiation. —Leslie Camhi, The New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2024

The movie doesn’t want to be a four-alarm funeral pyre but a tragic romance, presenting Amy through the prism of the amour fou that put her into a tailspin and fueled her triple-platinum second album. —David Fear, Rolling Stone, 14 May 2024

Eileen has been, up to this point, a bruised slice-of-life drama, a dingy-retro period piece, and possibly a romance just waiting to rev its amour fou engine. —David Fear, Rolling Stone, 2 Dec. 2023

Perhaps for the harder hit amour, in the U.K., supermarket chain Asda — previously owned by Walmart WMT -0.1% — has launched a $1.24 (that’s £1) engagement ring as part of its George Home collection, which is available to buy in its stores and online. —Mark Faithfull, Forbes, 26 Jan. 2023

Word History

Etymology

Middle English amour, amoure "affection, love between the sexes, spiritual love," borrowed from Anglo-French amur, amour, ameur (also continental Old French), going back to Latin amōr-, amor "affection, liking, love, sexual passion, illicit or homosexual passion," from am-, base of amāre "to have affection for, love, be in love, make love to" + -ōr-, -or, abstract noun suffix (going back to *-ōs) — more at amateur

Note: The regular outcome of Latin amor in modern French should be *ameur, not amour, and the discrepancy has been explained in a number of ways: as re-formation after the adjective amoureux "amorous"; as due to the influence of Anglo-French; as the outcome of -ō- in the dialect of medieval eastern Champagne, a significant courtly center; as a semantic split, ameur being restricted to the sense "rutting season of ungulates"; as due to the influence of ecclesiastical Latin. Probably the most popular hypothesis sees amour as a borrowing from Old Occitan, due to the influence of troubador verse. — Both the current modern meanings and the English pronunciation with stress on the second syllable are presumably due to reborrowing from French.

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing amour

• amour propre

Kids Definition

amour

noun

ə-ˈmu̇(ə)r 

ä-,

a-

: a love affair

especially : a secret love affair