Expand Your Vocabulary: Words Related to Love and Money

Expand Your Vocabulary: Words Related to Love and Money
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Love is a great emotion! The French language has a beautiful word for it, amour. Ancient Greek people also coined several terms related with the prefix word phil, which means ’to love’. Thus, if we add the word phil to a variety of word roots we will have a lot of interesting words.

Philosophy means, literally, the love of wisdom; currently it means a particular line of thought or belief arising from careful thought.

Philosopher refers to one who studies philosophy; a sane, rational and calm person.

Philosopher’s stone is a magical, hypothetical substance, which converts base metals into gold.

Philosopher’s wool is zinc oxide, used as a white powder, in pigments and cosmetics.

Philosophy is based upon logic. Logic is the systemic method of reasoning.

Philology is the humanistic study of language and literature.

Philomath is a lover of learning, a scholar or learned person. A philomath is also a bibliophile, one who loves books. In common terms the bibliophile is called a bookworm.

A Philistine, on the other hand is the exact opposite of a Philomath. It is a person who hates books, who stays away from learning and cultural refinement of any sort. Philistinism is the quality of being philistine; one who is only interested in gaining more and more material wealth and does not care about ethical or spiritual matters.

Philistine, incidentally, also means a dweller of Palestine in the Middle East in ancient times. These groups of people were the masters and persecutors of Jewish people by military conquest.

Logos is the root word to denote discourse or study. The suffix word -logy is derived from it, and when this is added to a word root like bio, geo, or anthrop the resulting words biology, geology, or anthropology mean the study of life, the study of earth, or the study of mankind.

Anthrop is the root word to indicate mankind in general.

Philanthropist means, literally, one who loves mankind, a person actively interested in social service by donating money or voluntary service.

Misanthrope is a person who hates all of mankind.

Phylogeny is the love or admiration for women by a person.

Philanderer is a person who has loving relationship with many women. He only pretends to love, not serious in any of his relations.

The name Phillips means lover of horses.

A lover is often pictured as an ardent, young person who finds his or her lover amorous.

Ardent means Impassioned (passionate), or fiery, translating to fervent or torrid

Though the word amour means love in the French language, it is nowadays construed as an illicit, hidden romantic affair.

Amorous means lovely, attractive, showing love; such as amorous glances.

A paramour is a secret lover, a husband or wife who has another lover outside of marriage, with the prefix par meaning other than.

Money is one of the great inventions of mankind and, like love, is also one of our biggest headaches. Most of our worries are related to earning more and more money, saving money for ourselves and our loved ones and spending money wisely to pay our bills.

All things related to money or any exchanges related to money are known as pecuniary. The word comes from the Latin word for cow or cattle since in early days the material wealth of a person was calculated on the basis of the cattle possessed by him or her. Once we learn the basic word pecuniary we will be able to learn more words related to money and descriptive words for rich and poor people.

Pecuniary relates to or involves money.

Wealthy means rich.

Opulent describes an even higher degree of wealth.

Opulence refers to all the material wealth and comfort related to super-rich people; a princely, grand and luxurious lifestyle.

What are the signs of opulence (habits of super rich people)? Being sumptuous.

Sumptuous means rich and superior quality, also indicating exorbitant spending, such as having sumptuous meal in an expensive restaurant.

Sumptuousness refers to the quality of being sumptuous.

Penurious most often means stingy or miserly, but it also refers to pauperism.

Pauperism means extremely poor and needy, possibly even surviving on charity from others.

Poor means indigent, destitute, impoverished, needy, suffering from privation (a lack of something).

Spendthrift refers to someone who spends exorbitantly, one who throws about money in a careless, aimless manner.

Miser means someone who is highly cautious economically, the exact opposite of a spendthrift.

Miser also refers to the penurious, person, who is also parsimonious.

Parsimonious indicates one who is totally unwilling to spend even for basic necessities or pleasures of life.

This parsimonious person is commonly known as a skinflint or scrooge (slang expression).

Barter: The system of exchange prevalent before money and coins were invented is known as barter. Interestingly, in many impoverished and far off regions of the world the barter system still exists. Even in Western industrialized societies, many people exchange services with one another. In industrial trade, modern big corporations also engage in barter of goods and services but the value of goods and/or services thus exchanged is calculated in terms of money.