Meanings
- UShumorousuncountableThe use of government espionage tools or techniques to investigate one's love interests.
1 more example
Anyway, when analysts thought about abusing the system, they were far less interested in what it could do for them professionally than in what it could do for them personally. This led to the practice known as LOVEINT, a gross joke on HUMINT and SIGINT and a travesty of intelligence, in which analysts used the agency’s programs to surveil their current and former lovers along with objects of more casual affection—reading their emails, listening in on their phone calls, and stalking them online.
2019 September 17, Edward Snowden, Permanent Record, New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN
Origin
Parody of SIGINT, HUMINT, etc., suggesting "love intelligence".
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
LOVEINT. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/LOVEINT
“LOVEINT.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/LOVEINT. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “LOVEINT,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/LOVEINT.
Source: LOVEINT on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.