This list of words and phrases for romantic relationships will warm your heart
Goo-goo Eyes
Goo-goo is seemingly one of a metric ton of synonyms for loving and affectionate in English. It’s almost always encountered in the phrase “goo-goo eyes,” implying a foolishly sentimental, romantic, or amorous glance.
While it might sound like baby talk, goo-goo is believed to be an alteration of goggle, meaning “protuberant” or “staring” (think of a cartoon animal’s eyes bulging out of its head with hearts instead of pupils, accompanied by the blast of an old-timey car horn).
Apple of One’s Eye
Since the pupil is essential to vision, it was held to be something very precious. Thus, when you call someone or something the “apple of your eye,” you are telling them that they are cherished. In the past, the idiom actually referred to the actual pupil of the eye because it was viewed as a round, solid object comparable to an apple.
The phrase is connected to the Bible, in which it appears in books of the Old Testament: Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs, and Lamentations. The first use of the phrase appears in Deuteronomy, which reads “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.”
A more literal translation of the original Hebrew biblical text is actually “little man of his eye,” which probably refers to the reflection of oneself that one sees in the eye of another person. In early English translations of the Bible, however, the phrase appears as “apple of his eye.” This probably developed from the Anglo-Saxon use of the word æppel for “pupil” as well as for “apple.” Thus, the phrase developed into “apple of one’s eye” and retained the meaning of something treasured.
Puppy Love (and Calf-love)
The term puppy love is used for those romantic feelings of love that are felt between young people and are not considered to be real love by more experienced adults (despite Paul Anka’s protestations in his 1960 hit “Puppy Love”). It dates to the early 19th century, but puppy-lover used in similar contexts has been traced to the 17th century.
Head Over Heels
Part of the appeal of this odd phrase is its lack of logic; the head is, after all, normally over the heels. It comes from the somewhat more logical phrase “heels over head,” which is first recorded circa 1400. The variant “head over heels” began to circulate in the 1600s, and it seems to have occurred through an error. Nevertheless, common use has made it acceptable, and it has superseded its predecessor. Besides referring to, in an illogical manner, a somersault or being upside down topsy-turvy, “head over heels” can mean “very much” or “deeply,” as in “He is head over heels in love,” or “very much/deeply in love” as in “She went head over heels for him.”
Heartthrob/Sweetheart
The word heart began pulsating in Old English as the name for the organ in the chest that pumps blood through veins and arteries. In the 16th century, the noun throb began beating. (The verb was already palpitating in the sense of “to pulsate or pound with abnormal force.”) Early uses of the noun include references to spasms of pain (especially in childbirth) or the catching of breath, or even a sigh.
The term heartthrob originally referred, unsurprisingly, to the pulsation of the heart in the 18th century and later to sentimental emotion. In early 20th-century American English, heartthrob named a person or thing that aroused romantic feelings or with whom one was infatuated; nowadays, it is chiefly applied to an attractive and usually young, famous man.
Heart also has an intimate relationship with sweet. Although heart has been openly paired (grammatically, as an open compound) with various other adjectives connoting love (such as dear and darling) since Old English, it began an intimate relationship with sweet, first in hyphenated form and then as a closed compound, as in the pet name sweetheart for a person you love very much, in the 16th century.