romantic
/rə(ʊ)ˈmantɪk
/adjective
1Conducive to or characterized by the expression of love: a romantic candlelit dinner...
- On our last evening in Maui, Daniel had prepared a very romantic, candlelit dinner on the shore.
- A beautiful woman, home alone, begins to set the dinner table for a romantic meal: candles, roses, a bottle of champagne.
- With white lights twinkling around the street-facing windows, a single red rose on our table and the candle lamp glowing between us, our fondue dinner felt almost romantic.
Synonyms
amorous, intimate, passionate
informal lovey-dovey
1.1(Of a person) readily demonstrating feelings of love: he’s very handsome, and so romantic...
- One sip and you know why romantic women fall in love with dark, pensive strangers.
- He gave the impression of being a romantic rebel rather than a person of prime ministerial stature.
- Nevertheless, James and Sylvia's connection counts as a love story, running as deep as any other romantic couple's, only in a different direction.
Synonyms
loving, amorous, passionate, tender, tender-hearted, fond, affectionate
informal lovey-dovey
1.2Relating to love or to sexual relationships: after their romantic relationship ended they became great friends her romantic adventures romantic fiction...
- I was a basketball player, not a stupid girl with romantic attachments.
- In the course of their investigation, Berlin begins to develop a romantic attachment to Helena.
- She struck up a romantic relationship with a young Italian man living in the apartment below and made friends easily.
Synonyms
sexual, intimate, erotic, amorous, amatory, sensual, carnal, ardent;
passionate, impassioned, lustful;
affectionate, fond, loving, tender, doting;
love, enamoured, lovesick;
illicit, adulterous
informal lovey-dovey, spoony, kissy, smoochy, goo-goo, hot, randy
archaic sportive
2Of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality: a romantic attitude to the past some romantic dream of country peace...
- As an historian - certainly as a woman - she had not the slightest romantic illusions about the realities of human life during the long childhood of the species.
- When she turns to poetry for children, there is a strain of romantic idealism as she suggests the beauty of uncrowded nature.
- But I'm struck by what seems to be a romantic view of the designer as the one who does the typography - as opposed to the one who has the idea.
Synonyms
idyllic, picturesque, fairy-tale;
beautiful, lovely, charming, delightful, pretty
idealistic, idealized, unrealistic, head-in-the-clouds, out of touch with reality;
starry-eyed, optimistic, hopeful, visionary, utopian, fairy-tale, fanciful, dreamy, ivory-towered;
impractical, unpractical, unworkable, improbable, unlikely
rare Micawberish, Panglossian
3 (usually Romantic) Relating to or denoting the movement of romanticism: the Romantic tradition...
- Perhaps more than any other Romantic composer, Berlioz found inspiration for his music in literature.
- Beethoven delighted Rousseau's Romantic admirers with his demonstration of the moral force expressible in music.
- He preferred to start again, with the result that he produced one of the finest concerti of the Romantic era.
noun
1A person with romantic beliefs or attitudes: I am an incurable romantic...
- True romantics have the right attitude; and use imagination to cultivate loving, sensual relationships.
- ‘We were considered the clowns, the dreamers, the romantics,’ he adds.
- This is a beautiful record for hopeless romantics and dreamers - don't let the cynics tell you otherwise.
Synonyms
idealist, sentimentalist, romanticist;
dreamer, visionary, utopian, Don Quixote, fantasist, fantasizer
archaic fantast
2 (usually Romantic) A writer or artist of the Romantic movement: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the later Romantics...
- Using the language of the Romantics or the Victorian poets, as so many Indo-English poets have done and still do, is disastrous.
- The English Romantics - Samuel Coleridge in particular - imported many of these new German ideas to Britain.
- Writers like the Romantics, who found mystery in the commonplace and saw the universal in each individual's experience, remind us to hope.
Origin
Mid 17th century (referring to the characteristics of romance in a narrative): from archaic romaunt 'tale of chivalry', from an Old French variant of romanz (see romance).