loveability
English
Noun
loveability (usually uncountable, plural loveabilities)
- Alternative spelling of lovability.
- 1828 May 31, Anglica [pseudonym], “Art[icle] X. Retrospective Criticism.”, in J[ohn] C[laudius] Loudon, editor, The Magazine of Natural History, […], volume I, number 2 (July 1828), London: […] Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, […], published 1829, →ISSN, →OCLC, part IV (Miscellaneous Intelligence), page 199:
- “Of the two,” says this lady, “I would have my fair countrywomen loveable rather than wise.” As this is a matter in which the whole sex are concerned, I must beg leave to protest against setting loveability in opposition to wisdom. The happiness of a woman is so much in the power of her affections, that to be loveable is of the first importance to her.
- 1857 June 23, Leigh Hunt, “Letters from Hammersmith”, in his eldest son [i.e., Thornton Leigh Hunt], editor, The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], published 1862, →OCLC, page 254:
- In one respect, besides the greater regard which I retain for “words,” my sequestered unlegal, i. e. unlaw-mingled life (a terrible compound epithet that, I must own) has given me an advantage over you in keeping alive my tendency to see loveabilities in people, and thus to add to my stock of comforts; for I do not the less love old friends—quite the contrary—for when good-heartedness survives all trials and exacerbations, where can loveability be so well proved?
- 2015, Arabella Kurtz, chapter 4, in J[ohn] M[axwell] Coetzee, Arabella Kurtz, The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy, New York, N.Y.: Vintage, →ISBN, page 37:
- For Hester’s loveability as a heroine arises from the fact that she both embraces and defies her censure, managing not to sidestep what she has done and the meaning of this for others, but to make out of it her own story.