The word in consideration is “love” whose pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is /lʌv/. The word is a noun and its meaning according to the Oxford English Dictionary is:
A feeling or disposition of deep affection or fondness for someone, typically arising from a recognition of attractive qualities, from natural affinity, or from sympathy and manifesting itself in concern for the other’s welfare and pleasure in his or her presence (“Love”).
The form of the word love exists in different periods of the English language. The form of “love” in old English is lufu, Middle English luve, and love in the early modern English. The first attestation of the word love was in the 14th century in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in which he mentions the phrase “love is blind”. The word "love" is an extensively used word in the English language when communicating. It is ranked among top four hundred often used words. Also, it has many variants which include lovemaking, lovefest, lovebird, and Lovelock
There are various examples of the use of the word love in Middle English writings. First, there is a phrase “for grete love and to have done hym worship at his feste” in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, which is a Middle French title meaning “the death of Arthur” (Malory and William 13). Secondly, the word appears in the letter of Sir William Stonor from Henry Colet a well known London merchant in the early 15th Century. In the letter, there is mention of love in the phrase “ I owe love to the child, and loth to displese you”.There has not been a significant change of the meaning of the word love as it still holds its original meaning.
Works Cited
Hanham, Alison. "CL Kingsford: The Stonor Letters, and Two Chronicles." The Review of English Studies 60.245 (2009): 382-405.
"Love, n.1." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2016. Web. 28 May 2016.
