true love

plural true loves

1. Faithful love.
   1. uncountableoriginallyFeelings of love that are adhered to faithfully, or the faithful manifestation of such feelings.

      What are the joys wealth and honours bestow? Do they endure like true love's steady glow?

      1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 542

      3 more examples

      I shall be forsworn, which is a great argument of falsehood, if I love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love, […]

      1595–1596, William Shakespeare, Loues Labour's loſt, act I, scene ii

      When all’s done, what hast thou won Of the only sweet that’s under the sun? Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh Of true love’s least, least ecstasy?

      1875, Sidney Lanier, “The Symphony”

      For both Thomas and Chrétien true love is identified with the ability to be true to one’s commitment, and Fenice is justifiably confident of her ability to be constant.

      1988, Evelyn Mullay, The Artist at Work: Narrative Technique in Chrétien de Troyes, page 88

   2. countableoriginallyA lover who is faithful to the object of his or her affection or faithfully loved themselves.

      The first day of Christmas My true love sent to me A partridge in a pear tree.

      c. 1780, unknown author, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, in Mirth Without Mischief

      1 more example

      I leant my back unto an aik, I thought it was a trusty tree; But first it bow’d, and fyne it brak, Sae my true love did lightly me.

      1765, “Waly Waly, Love Be Bonny”, as quoted in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets (1905), Thomas Percy (editor)

2. Love that is in some sense purer or more unique than ordinary love.
   1. uncountableby later reinterpretationThe form of romantic affection that is considered pure and wholly positive, not just based on feelings of lust and sex.

      Some believe that true love doesn’t exist.

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      And as all true love is reciprocal, so also is true love lasting and indestructible; or, to “speak as a man,” even because it is the very inmost life of humanity, it is, therefore, true unto death.

      1847, Friedrich von Schlegel, translated by A. J. W. Morrison, The Philosophy of Life, and Philosophy of Language: In a Course of Lectures, page 38

      The leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics has tried to answer the age-old question of philosophers, playwrights and poets — the meaning of love — and concluded that erotic desire without self-sacrifice and spiritual devotion cannot be true love.

      2006 January 26, Linda Morris, “Pope dedicates message to meaning of true love”, in The Age, Melbourne

   2. countableby later reinterpretationThe unique individual for whom one feels such affection.

      He was my one true love.

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      Yellow is the colour of my true love’s hair In the morning when we rise.

      1965, “Colours”, performed by Donovan

   3. uncountableby later reinterpretationThe situation in which a couple is perfectly compatible and there is no better relationship, as set by a greater force such as God or fate.
3. countableA thing for which a person feels an intense love.

   Cinematography is my only true love.