Overlove- [oh-ver-luhv] noun: a feeling of love for a person who’s feelings are not mutual, an over invested notion- when one cares or has feelings for someone else who is not as emotionally involved – the state of being overly emotionally attached to someone when the feeling is not mutual-
Example in sentence: Though it is sad, the amount of overlove he has for Stephanie drives her away.
Origin:
over- Old English ofer, Germanic origin- related to Dutch over and German über-
love- Old English lufu, of Germanic origin – from Latin “libet” meaning ‘it is pleasing’
This neologism might seem a bit confusing at first, but it’s the perfect term to describe the feeling exactly when you’re feeling it; you just know. Stories of my close friends’ relationships and experiences of my own, I can assess and conclude that overlove is indeed, out there. It’s a term that we can’t really compare to any other one specific term, which is why I think it’s a substantial neologism. Everyone has felt it before, maybe you didn’t notice it for a while, or just didn’t recognize is it. It’s when you feel for someone, not just a little crush. It’s when you actually feel a passion and a purpose for someone, you want to be with them, love them, show them your life and be happy and whole together, and all of these passions are unrequited. The person doesn’t feel the same, it’s not mutual, and you have the emptiest feeling in your body, emptier than you’d imagined possible. Unfortunately overlove is hard to talk yourself out of, and takes a lot of will power to overcome this feeling towards someone you believe is “the one”. But if we can understand the term and use it more often, the underlying meaning of overlove will be obvious, and hopefully the majority of people can avoid this feeling.
To feel overlove is a mindset, a horrible attitude or idea that you just cannot shake. It is a noun, and therefor if I changed the part of speech, it would alter the definition of the word. It’s simply a feeling, a perspective, a situation, and meant to be a noun. A synonym for overlove would be unrequited love, or infatuation. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, unrequited love is “one-sided love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep and strong romantic affections.” I think this would be the best synonym for overlove, it embodies the true one-sided aspect of overlove but says the other person “may or may not be aware of the admirers strong romantic affection”- this is the difference between unrequited love and overlove. With overlove, it is 100%, written in stone that the beloved is not as equally invested.
Antonyms would be mutuality, or something like relationship stability, closure, contentment. This word may be seen as controversial because not everyone may feel overlove at some point in life. And it’s not very literal, it’s just a feeling which people may misconstrue and take very seriously. It is the type of feeling that you may have already had to have felt in order to relate and understand its definition. I can see this word being used in frequently in the romance scene if it were made an official word in the English language. Romance novels, chick flicks, love stories, almost any film starring Jennifer Aniston or Katherine Heigle.
What if in 2050, the English language is completely revised, and what and how we speak now is what we would consider “old English”? Our language as we know it may evolve, turn into slang, shorten, be twisted and flipped into who knows what kind of language. However, I can see the meaning of this neologism being one of those words, something that may continue to evolve until the core meaning of the word is easily depicted in the name itself. Unrequited love is (now) being shortened to overlove, and maybe by 2050 we would shorten it to nolove, ziplove, coldheart, nofeel. The possibilities as to what this word may become are ad infinitum. If I were to encounter the word overlove in a text today, I would think by using context clues its meaning wouldn’t be too difficult to decipher. People may read overlove in a text in the future it is even more likely that they will naturally pick it up and quickly begin saying it to their friends. Word of mouth will carry this idea through the grape vine, and expectantly people will see: the sooner we coin this feeling, the sooner the younger couples emerging will learn, resulting in less emotional damage for newer generations and more hope for the image of romance.