• romance •
Pronunciation: ro-mæns • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A love affair. 2. an artistic work about a love affair: novel, musical, poem, etc. 3. A story about the heroic adventures of dreamy, dashing, chivalrous heroes in a fantastically ideal setting. 4. The descendants of the language spoken by the Romans, such as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish.
Notes: Romance has come a long way in its lifetime. The adjective, romantic, refers either to an artistic work (music, literature, art) that is ideally beautiful or the attitudes of a courtship. We also have a verb, romanticize, meaning "to make ideal, exaggerate the romance". Romance itself may be used as a verb meaning "to court romantically".
In Play: Today we hear romance far more often in the first sense above: "Phil Anders is in a lifelong romance with himself." The second sense is still available: "Rhoda Book has written a romance about a swashbuckling 18th century man which she hopes will be made into a movie." The fourth sense of this word comes up often in tne Good Word series: "Harold heard in high school that if he studied Latin, it would help him with all the Romance languages."
Word History: Why is today's Good Word based on Roman? The favorite Roman pastimes were watching gladiators slaughter each other or viewing Christians being killed and eaten by wild animals. Nothing romantic about these distractions. Today's word was borrowed from Old French romanz "verse narrative written in the French vernacular rather than Latin" (Modern French roman "novel"). This definition expanded to any language and any chivalrous plot and persisted until today. However, The sense of chivalry also narrowed to just the courtship and thence to No. 1 above. Roman is the remains of Latin romanus "pertaining to Rome (Roma)." Where Roma came from is anyone's guess.
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