Old English lufu, of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit lubhyati 'desires', Latin libet 'it is pleasing', libido 'desire', also by leave² and lief.

• As you might expect, love is almost as old as time. The word's ancient root is also the source of Latin lubido ‘desire’ (which gave us libido (early 20th century)). Love is blind goes back to classical times, but first appeared in English in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the 14th century. Lewis Carroll appears to have been the first to use love makes the world go round, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865—he may have based it on a French folk song with the lines c'est l'amour, l'amour, l'amour, Qui fait la monde à la ronde, ‘it is love, love, love that makes the world go round’. In 1967 the Beatles sang ‘All You Need is Love’, and a slogan associated with the weepie film Love Story (1970) was ‘Love means never having to say you're sorry’. The love that dare not speak its name is homosexuality. The description is by the poet Lord Alfred Douglas, whose association with Oscar Wilde led to Wilde being imprisoned in Reading gaol for homosexual activity.

  The use of love in tennis and squash for a score of zero apparently derives from the phrase to play for love, that is for the love of the game, not for money. A popular explanation connects it with French l'oeuf ‘egg’, from the resemblance in shape between an egg and a zero (see also duck).

  One caricature of actors is that they all gushingly call each other ‘love’. In the late 20th century an actor, or anyone actively involved in entertainment, came to be a luvvy, a respelling of lovey, an affectionate term of address used since the mid 18th century.