English

Alternative forms

• love-match

Noun

love match ‎(plural love matches)

1. A marriage, betrothal, or other romantic relationship which is based on a spontaneous mutual feeling of love by the two individuals in the relationship, as opposed to a relationship based on other reasons or an arranged marriage brokered by parents or by third parties.
   • 1816, Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary—Volume I, ch. 2:

     He had . . . two daughters, one of whom still flourished in single blessedness, and the other, who was greatly more juvenile, made a love-match with a captain in the Forty-twa, who had no other fortune but his commission and a Highland pedigree.

   • 1897, Frances Hodgson Burnett, His Grace of Osmonde, ch. 27:

     "And this I can tell you, 'tis not the five villages she marries, nor the Duke, but the man. And 'tis not the fine lady he takes to his heart, but our Clo, and none other, and would have taken her in her smock had she been a beggar wench. 'Tis an honest love-match, that I swear!"

   • 1978 August 7, "The Heiress and Her Comrade," Time (retrieved 14 June 2014):

     It was, beyond doubt, the year's strangest love match. This week in Moscow, Christina Onassis, 27, heir to her late father Aristotle's $500 million shipping, financial and industrial empire, is set to marry a Soviet citizen and Communist Party member.

   • 2006 April 16, Sheila Kohler, "Modern Love: This Is Where the Dog Comes In," New York Times (retrieved 14 June 2014):

     My second marriage, unlike my first, in which I became pregnant at 19 and married the man, was a love match from the start.

References

• love match at OneLook Dictionary Search