Episode 13

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Published on:

13th Feb 2026

Episode 13: romance

Latin and Greek have their own words for love and attraction—amor and eros, for instance—but these words don't serve as the root of our word "romance." Instead, "romance" comes from the very name of the Latin-speaking people, the Romans. How does the name for a population come to mean something about affection? We consider Jane Austen's Persuasion to help us track the meaning of "romance" from its ancient origins to our modern era.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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About the Podcast

Original Public Meaning
Exploring the ancient roots of modern words
Where do our modern English words come from? And what do their long histories tell us about our own ideas and the wider world? On Original Public Meaning, we unearth the ancient foundations of our language and consider how its vast, rich literature—fiction, essays, science, and more—can help us savor our words today.
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Charles McNamara

Director of Greek and Latin Language, University of Minnesota