Lovelich

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Pleasing and beautiful to look at, with a gentle, charming quality that draws admiring affection
2. Having an appealing grace or loveliness, the kind of attractiveness that wins the heart of others
3. Describing someone or something delightful and graceful, worthy of love and admiration in the old poetic sense

Etymology: "Lovelich" is a Middle English adjective meaning "lovely," "attractive," or "pleasing," formed from the noun "love" and the suffix "-lich," an older form of "-like" that means "having the qualities of" or "resembling." So the word is essentially "love-like," with the sense of something that inspires affection or delight. The suffix did a lot of work in Old and Middle English. Words built with "-lich" were common, and many of them later dropped the ending as "-ly" took over, so "lovelich" is a near relative of "lovely" rather than a separate invention. The two forms existed side by side for a time before "lovely" won out. The word appears in Middle English writing, where it was used in the sense of pleasant or agreeable. Its survival is mainly as a historical spelling, which is why modern readers meet it mostly in older texts and scholarly editions.