A Romance Was Originally a Story in the Local Language
Romance means a love affair or a love story. It first meant any tale written in the everyday language rather than in Latin.
Romance now means love, but it began as a language label. Medieval writers used *romanz* for anything written in the vernacular — the Roman-descended speech of France — rather than in Latin. Those popular tales were full of knights and adventures, and the word slid from the language to the subject matter and finally to love.
- A love affair. *A brief romance.*
- A love story. *She writes romance.*
- Excitement and glamour. *The romance of the railways.*
- Romance languages — those descended from Latin. *French is a Romance language.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | romance | A summer romance. |
| Plural | romances | Historical romances. |
| Adjective | romantic | A romantic gesture. |
| Verb | romanticise | Romanticise the past. |
| Related | Romance | The Romance languages. |
How it is used in a sentence
- Romance is the best-selling fiction genre.Publishing.
- There is a certain romance about old maps.Glamour and appeal.
- Spanish, French and Romanian are Romance languages.Capitalised in this sense.
The Romance languages
- Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian — the five with most speakers
- Catalan, Galician, Occitan — widely spoken regional languages
- Romansh — one of Switzerland's official languages
- All from Latin — specifically from spoken, not literary, Latin
- Romanticism — the artistic movement, from the same word
From Old French *romanz*, in the Roman manner, meaning in the vernacular, from Latin *Romanicus*. The love sense is a late development, established by the seventeenth century.
Why are they called Romance languages?
Because they descend from the Latin spoken across the Roman empire, as opposed to the literary Latin of books.
Is Romanticism about romance?
Not primarily. The movement valued emotion, nature and the individual over classical restraint, taking its name from the same medieval word.