romance

n

1. fiction, novel, story, tale, narrative; love story, torrid romance; fairy tale, heroic epic, legend, science fiction, fantasy, Western, spy thriller, Inf. thriller; Gothic novel, horror story, ghost story, Inf. spine-tingler.

2. invention, concoction, trumped-up story; flight of fancy, fabrication, tall tale, cock-and-bull story, fish story, exaggeration, bosh; equivocation, shift, shiftiness, evasion, half-truth; fib, white lie, misrepresentation, prevarication, falsehood, lie, untruth, falsity.

3. love affair, Inf. affair, romantic affair, liasion, dalliance, intrigue; romantic attachment, amour, Fr. affaire d'amour, Fr. affaire de coeur. infatuation, fascination, Inf. crush, Inf. case; courtship, wooing, pursuit, seduction.

4. daydream, reverie, castle-building, quixotism; fancy, fantasy, whimsy, whim, caprice, figment, flight, flight of fancy; notion, vagary, conceit; quirk, crotchet, craziness, crazy notion or idea, Inf. screwball or whacky idea, peculiar notion.

v

5. invent, daydream, fantasize; build castles in the air, ride a magic carpet; imagine, envision, see things; speculate, let the mind roam or have free rein, give free rein to the imagination.

6. court, woo, address, pay address to, pay suit to; serenade, make love to, Archaic. sue; go with, keep company with, go steady with, take out, date, Brit. walk out with; make love, make out, pitch woo, bill and coo, Inf. neck.

7. curry favor with, flatter, fawn upon, toady to, pander to; Inf. soft-soap, Inf. honey up, Inf. butter or grease up, Inf. bootlick, Inf. apple-polish, Sl. brownnose.