In English, love refers to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure (“I loved that meal”) to interpersonal attraction (“I love my partner”). “Love” may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros, to the emotional closeness of familial love, or the platonic love that defines friendship, to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.
Definitions are hard, but often if you look at the underlying phenomena you are trying to explain you don’t need them. In this case it seems the whole issue is disagreement and confusion about the meaning of the word “love”, in which case I suspect it just doesn’t matter to anyone but a lexicographer.
Is this a common definition? I’ve not seen it before, and it seems both very strong and very limited.
Wikipedia notes:
Definitions are hard, but often if you look at the underlying phenomena you are trying to explain you don’t need them. In this case it seems the whole issue is disagreement and confusion about the meaning of the word “love”, in which case I suspect it just doesn’t matter to anyone but a lexicographer.