Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A tender feeling toward another; fondness.
- noun Feeling or emotion.
- noun A disposition to feel, do, or say; a propensity.
- noun Obsolete Prejudice; partiality.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To love; have an affection for.
- noun The state of having one's feelings affected; bent or disposition of mind; phase of mental disposition; feeling.
- noun A settled good will, love, or zealous attachment: as, the affection of a parent for his child: generally followed by for, sometimes by to or toward, before the object.
- noun Natural instinct or impulse; sympathy.
- noun Prejudice; bias.
- noun A modification; the effect or result of action upon a thing; especially, in psychology, a passive modification of consciousness.
- noun In metaphysics (translation of Gr.
πάθος , suffering), one of those qualities of bodies by which they directly affect the senses: often improperly extended to other properties of bodies. - noun A disease, or the condition of being diseased; a morbid or abnormal state of body or mind: as, a gouty affection; hysteric affection.
- noun In painting, a lively representation of passion. Wotton.
- noun Affectation.
- noun Synonyms Attachment, Fondness, etc. (see
love ), tenderness, partiality, bias. Seepassion . - noun In recent psychol., the elementary feeling-process; the pure or qualitatively simple feeliug, in which there is no admixture of sensation. See the extract.
- noun In trigonometry, relation to .
- noun In law, the making over, pawning, or mortgaging of a thing to assure the payment of a sum of money or the discharge of some other duty or service.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The act of affecting or acting upon; the state of being affected.
- noun An attribute; a quality or property; a condition; a bodily state.
- noun Bent of mind; a feeling or natural impulse or natural impulse acting upon and swaying the mind; any emotion; ; inclination; disposition; propensity; tendency.
- noun A settled good will; kind feeling; love; zealous or tender attachment; -- often in the pl. Formerly followed by
to , but now more generally byfor ortowards - noun obsolete Prejudice; bias.
- noun (Med.) Disease; morbid symptom; malady.
- noun The lively representation of any emotion.
- noun obsolete Affectation.
- noun obsolete Passion; violent emotion.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The act of
affecting or acting upon. - noun The state of being affected.
- noun An attribute; a quality or property; a condition; a bodily state; as, figure, weight, etc., are affections of bodies.
- noun Bent of mind; a feeling or natural impulse or natural impulse acting upon and swaying the mind; any emotion; as, the benevolent affections, esteem, gratitude, etc.; the malevolent affections, hatred, envy, etc.; inclination; disposition; propensity; tendency.
- noun Kind
feeling ;love ; zealous or tenderattachment ; settledgood will . - noun medicine Disease; morbid symptom; malady; as, a pulmonary affection. --Dunglison.
- verb to
feel an affection,emotion orlove for.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a positive feeling of liking
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word affection.
Examples
-
"She will rather die than give any sign of affection," says Benedick of Beatrice; and in that line Shakspere reveals one of the two essential traits of genuine modern coyness -- _dissemblance of feminine affection_.
Primitive Love and Love-Stories Henry Theophilus Finck 1890
-
_The affection which we rightly have for what is lovely must ordinate justly_, _in due manner end proportion_, _become the object of a new affection_, _or be itself beloved_, _in order to our being endued with that virtue which is the principle of a good life_.
Human Nature and Other Sermons Joseph Butler 1722
-
_affection_ is naïve, to say the least, and need not be commented on after what has just been said about the true nature of affection and its altruistic test.
Primitive Love and Love-Stories Henry Theophilus Finck 1890
-
_how_, I say, to _set affection against affection_, and to master one by another, even as we used to hunt beast with beast, and fly bird with bird, which otherwise, percase, we could not so easily recover. '
The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Delia Bacon 1835
-
With this there is united the complex sentiment which we term affection -- a sentiment which, as it exists between those of the same sex, must be regarded as an independent sentiment, but one which is here greatly exalted.
Primitive Love and Love-Stories Henry Theophilus Finck 1890
-
What I have striven to say is, that I forgive my brother, not because I love him, but because of the affection I bear him; also that this affection is the product of reason, is the sum of the judgments I have achieved.
-
A dissection of what we call affection does not give so vivid an impression of the master-passion as a true love-sonnet written by a poet.
The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 An Illustrated Monthly Various
-
Then the moon slips up into the sky from behind the hills, and the fisherman begins to think of home, and of the foolish, fond old rhymes about those whom the moon sees far away, and the stars that have the power to fulfil wishes -- as if the celestial bodies knew or cared anything about our small nerve-thrills which we call affection and desires!
Little Rivers; a book of essays in profitable idleness Henry Van Dyke 1892
-
The practice of infanticide, for selfish reasons, was, as we shall see in later chapters, horribly prevalent among many of the lower races, and even where the young were tenderly reared, the feeling toward them was hardly what we call affection -- a conscious, enduring devotion -- but a sort of animal instinct which is shared by tigers and other fierce and cruel animals, and which endures but a short time.
Primitive Love and Love-Stories Henry Theophilus Finck 1890
-
He will not weary of us, nor throw us back upon ourselves when our affection is the most ardent.
brobbins commented on the word affection
passion, change
July 22, 2009
ruzuzu commented on the word affection
"A disease, or the condition of being diseased; a morbid or abnormal state of body or mind: as, a gouty affection; hysteric affection."
- From the Century Dictionary
July 19, 2010
hernesheir commented on the word affection
I am very affectionate. Disease may be the cause of my problem, after all.
July 19, 2010