New Dictionary Defines 'Love' in 47 Words, Married Lexicographer Calls It 'Generous'

The forthcoming edition of the Whitmore English Dictionary will define 'love' in forty-seven words — a length that senior editor Dr. Nadia Lemma described as 'adequate,' managing editor Dr. Owen Diacritic described as 'perhaps excessive,' and lexicographer-at-large Dr. Harold Morpheme, married for thirty-one years, described as 'generous.'

The definition, which underwent eleven drafts over a four-month period, currently reads: 'An intense feeling of deep affection, attachment, or devotion toward a person, object, or concept, often accompanied by a desire for the well-being or presence of the object of affection, and frequently resistant to precise definition.'

The phrase 'frequently resistant to precise definition' was added in draft nine after a three-hour editorial meeting in which the team attempted to distinguish romantic love from familial love from the love one feels for a particularly well-made sandwich.

'We spent forty minutes on the sandwich question,' said Dr. Lemma. 'Someone argued that if you can love a person and love a sandwich, the word is too broad. Someone else argued that the breadth is the point. We nearly lost the afternoon.'

The most contentious phrase was 'deep affection,' which Dr. Morpheme argued was 'overstating things considerably, at least after the first decade.'

'I've been married for thirty-one years,' Dr. Morpheme explained. 'Love is real. It is important. But "deep affection" implies a constancy of feeling that the empirical evidence does not always support. Some days it's deep affection. Some days it's a mutual agreement to tolerate each other's breathing patterns.'

Dr. Morpheme proposed an alternative phrase — 'a sustained interpersonal commitment of variable intensity' — which was rejected for 'lacking warmth.'

The final definition will include four sub-senses, eight illustrative quotations, and a cross-reference to 'tolerance.'