Learn English – Origin of phrasal verb “love on”

etymologyphrasal-verbs

Lately I've been hearing friends talk about loving on people. Here's an example of the sort of thing they'll say:

We should be working in the streets and loving on the homeless.

Forge relationships and love on your friends!

You can find specific examples of this usage by typing "loving on" people into your favourite search engine.

I have done a bit of research on phrasal verbs and have read these two posts here on EL&U. While they are certainly interesting, they don't quite answer my questions:

  1. What is the origin of loving on or to love on? Could it have been popularized by people who thought that loving or love weren't active enough for the context? (Loving on seems most frequently used in a religious context, especially when referring to good works.)

  2. Of what use is the preposition on? It doesn't seem to change the meaning much—you can't physically love on somebody in the sense they're describing—and I've only seen or heard it used in contexts where love by itself would suffice.

I ran a Google ngram with input love_VERB on, although I can't say for sure whether that's helpful.

Best Answer

From John Dryden's 1700 Palamon and Arcite (a translation of The Knight's Tale from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales)...

So thou, if fortune will thy suit advance,
Love on, nor envy me my equal chance

Two guys both fancy the same girl; less poetically, the speaker is saying they both have the right to try their luck and love on (i.e. - continue to "love").

My guess is Dryden's love = pursue your suit (archaically, make love to her). But you could just as easily interpret it as experience feelings of love for her. The point is there have always been contexts where (verb) love can be followed by on.


But I don't think there will be any "acceptable" instances of (verb) love on [object of love], in the sense of being considered "grammatical" by any significant proportion of Anglophones.

OP's two instances aren't really the same. The first [mistakenly] substitutes on for towards (AmE toward), probably echoing preceding in the streets. The second is just a quirky "slogan" format.

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