Romancers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person engaged in or obsessed with romantic relationships and passionate love
2. an individual who idealizes or fictionalizes romantic encounters and experiences
3. one who engages in the cultivation of romantic traditions, often through storytelling or art

Etymology: Before "romance" meant a love story, it named a language. In medieval France, "romanz" referred to the vernacular tongue that had grown out of Latin, and a work written in that tongue was called a romance. Those works were often tales of knights, quests, and courtly love, so the word moved from the language to the stories themselves. "Romancer" is simply "romance" with the agent suffix "-er," meaning one who produces or engages in the thing named. It first described a writer of such tales. The sense then widened to a person who dwells on love and adventure in imagination, embellishing or inventing romantic experiences rather than living them as they happened.

Synonyms: lovers, admirers, wooers, courters, flirters

Antonyms: rejecters, detractors, opponents, disbelievers, nonadmirers