Learn English – Why does “love child” imply “out of wedlock”

connotationword-usage

The etymology of love child says it derived as a polite form of "love brat" which was used around the 18th century.

My question is when two people are in love and they have a child, could you not call him/her a "love child"?

Edit: Why does it have to have the (rather negative) connotation that it is outside of marriage, when love itself is a positive emotion?

Funny enough, "love child" makes sense in Indian English, where there is a concept of "love marriage" and "arranged marriage" – as has been earlied posted.

Best Answer

You can't really change the meaning of a word to suit your taste. "Love child" refers to a child born to parents not married to each other, and that is what people take away from it. If you ignore what others think and only pay attention to how you mean a word, you will cause your listeners or readers confusion or merriment.

(Incidentally, the word "love child" carries the same stigma in some other languages as well. 愛の子 (ai no ko or "child of love") means exactly the same thing.)

EDIT

Answering OP's question about how did it come to have a negative connotation. From Wikipedia article about Legitimacy:

At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another, or who is born shortly after the parents' marriage ends through divorce. In both canon and civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate. For the opposite of legitimacy, the term illegitimate has been used about a child born to a woman and a man not married to one another, though in many societies today such terminology has become obsolete even in law, and abandoned in common communication in favor of less abrasive words such as extramarital or love child.

Illegitimate is a pejorative term, and, euphemism or no, love child ultimately inherits that meaning from its ancestor.

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