Romance, Romantic, Romanticism

All Romance languages can distinguish between something that leaks into and something that leaks out of. The Italians even have a word for the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky.

(Wouldn’t they just?) It’s sgriob. And we have nothing in English to match the Danish hygge (meaning ‘instantly satisfying and cosy’), the French sang-froid, the Russian glasnost, or the Spanish macho, so we must borrow the term from them or do without the sentiment.”

Mother Tongue: The Story of the English Language by Bill Bryson Romance has distinct meanings: 1) Romance is the idealized love, sentimental love; a love affair 2) remoteness from the reality; an idealized life, cut-off from reality 3) a literary genre (Wuthering Heights, Gone With the Wind, Dr Zhivago) 4) a movie genre (Casablanca, Titanic) 5) Romance also refers to those languages derived from Latin 6) an emotional attraction to a hero, chivalry, a tale, a legend 7) exaggeration, falsification

The Romance (uppercase ‘R’) languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan and others. The Romance languages share a large proportion of vocabulary and they have similar grammatical forms in spite of phonological changes: similarities to Latin. As the word suggests, the Romance languages have a connection to the language of Rome / Roman Empire which was Latin.

As a verb, romance means distort the truth, woo someone (who is romancing with whom in showbiz is one of the news items), seek the attention or custom of someone. Romancer is a writer of romances, romantic novels; a liar dwelling in fantasies, in unreal world.

Romantic is an adjective referring to the idealized life (he lives in a romantic state), sentimental, a fantasy, being in romance (in love); indicating to arts and style romantic refers to concerning with feelings and emotions but not to the form and the aesthetic qualities; unpractical, fantastic; concerning with Romanticist.

Romanticist is a writer or artist of the romantic school. Romanticism, or the Romantic era or Romantic period, refers to the artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe spanning the late 18th century and reached its zenith during 1800 to 1850.

The striking characteristic of this period is the emphasis on emotion and individualism, glorification of past and nature. Based on Tennyson’s poem, J W Waterhouse’s 1888 painting ‘The Lady of Shalott’ was romantic but not Romantic.