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With Valentine’s Day right round the corner, lovers will be in need of juicy expressions, so here is a selection. An aubade is a song or poem greeting the dawn, a morning love song, a song or poem of lovers parting at daybreak or morning music. The parting dialogues between Romeo and Juliet are also an aubade. The conversation between a couple parting after an all-night dance party is the modern aubade. The word ‘aubade’ originated from the Spanish alba or ‘dawn’ in the 17th century.

A song of love can also be an amoretto. The word ‘amoretto’ is an interesting one. It originated from the Latin amor or love and refers to any representation of Cupid. So, it can be used for any work of art, music, song or even the lovers themselves. A woman with whom one has intimate relations can be called ‘inamorata’ and the masculine form of the word is ‘inamorato’. Both come from the Italian verb inamorare that means ‘enamoured’. A person enamoured of someone can also be termed as ‘moonstruck’. A moonstruck person is unable to think or act normally, being so lost in love.

The moon occupies a major part of man’s imagination and creativity. At some time or the other, a beautiful woman gets compared to the moon, whatever the language maybe. It is indeed creditable for a dusty satellite to occupy so large a space within human discourse. Even the happiest period of married life, the honeymoon, comes from this heavenly body. To begin with, honeymoon was derived from the idea of affection waning like the moon but later the sense came to apply to the first month after marriage.

The origins of the word moon can be traced to many languages, for example, the Old English (Mona), Dutch (maan), German (mond), Greek (men) and Latin (mensis). They all mean ‘month’, and the Latin metiri means ‘to measure’ as the moon was use to measure time in ancient days. The number of words related to the moon comprises a list that seems endless, for instance, moonbeam, moon blindness, moon cake, moon-faced, moonlit, moonraker and moonwalk…. See, it could go on and on and on.