am

Latin

love

Variants:amamoramat

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About This Root

The root am comes from a tight little cluster of Latin words all built on the idea of love. amāre meant "to love"; its participle stem gave us amāt-; the noun amor meant "love" itself; and amīcus meant "friend" — literally "the one you love." Hold those three forms in your head — am (love), amor (love as a thing), amīcus (a loved one, a friend) — and almost every word in this family falls into place.

Start with the warm, romantic branch from amor. amorous is "full of love," the adjective for someone glowing with desire. amour is French for "love affair" and English borrowed it for exactly that: a secret romance. amatory (from amāt-) describes anything expressing love — amatory poetry. And enamor is en- (to put into) + amor: to put love into someone, to make them fall for you. Say you are enamored of someone and you are soaked in amor.

The friendly, social branch comes from amīcus (friend). amicable means "friend-like" — the tone of two parties who part on good terms (an amicable divorce). amity is the noun: friendly relations, especially between nations. And amiable (through amāre, "lovable") describes a person who is easy to love: warm, good-natured.

Then the surprise. amateur also belongs here, though it looks like it shouldn't. It came through French from Latin amātor, "a lover" — someone who does a thing purely out of love for it, not for money. Over time "one who loves doing it" drifted into "one who isn't a paid professional," and then, a little unfairly, into amateurish — clumsy, not up to professional standard. The love is still in there; we just stopped hearing it.

The biggest twist is the opposite of love. Latin made an enemy by negating a friend: in- (not) + amīcus (friend) = inimīcus, "not-a-friend." Worn down through Old French, inimīcus became English enemy — your most familiar word secretly hides amīcus inside it. The abstract noun enmity (hostility) and the formal adjective inimical (hostile, harmful) come from the same negated friend. So this one root holds both poles: love and friendship on one side, and on the other, the friend turned negative — the enemy.

From Latin amare (to love) and amor (love). Spans romantic and interpersonal affection — amorous (full of love), amiable (lovable), amicable (friendly), and enamored (in love). Amateur originally meant 'one who loves' (doing something). Intriguingly, enemy comes from in- + amicus, literally 'not a friend'.

Memory Tip

Think of amor — love — at the heart of every am word. An amateur does it for the love of it; an amiable person is easy to love; you get enamored when love is poured into you. And the sneaky one: enemy = in- (not) + amīcus (friend) = "un-friend." Love is the root; remove it and you get the enemy.

Core Words Deep Dive

The few words from this family worth telling in full — one by one.

amateur

The family member whose meaning drifted the furthest. It came through French from Latin amātor, 'a lover' — someone who does an activity purely out of love, not for pay. That original 'for the love of it' sense is still alive (an amateur astronomer), but the word also slid toward 'non-professional,' and from there to the faintly insulting amateurish ('not skilled enough'). Remember the buried amor and the word stays positive; forget it and it sounds like an insult.

enemy

The most surprising word in the family, because it hides its opposite. Latin negated a friend — in- (not) + amīcus (friend) = inimīcus, 'not-a-friend' — and centuries of wear through Old French smoothed inimīcus down into the everyday word enemy. You would never guess 'friend' lives inside it, yet it does. The formal adjective inimical and the noun enmity preserve the older spelling more visibly.

amiable

From Latin amīcābilis (later reshaped under amāre, 'lovable'), it describes a person who is easy to like — warm, friendly, pleasant. Keep it for people and their manner. Its near-twin amicable looks almost identical but applies to relationships and arrangements (an amicable agreement), not personalities. People are amiable; settlements are amicable.

enamor

en- (to put into) + amor (love): literally 'to put love into.' It is most natural in the passive — be enamored of / with something — meaning you have been filled with love or fascination for it. Note it usually carries a slightly literary, elevated tone, and the negative 'not enamored of' is a polite British way of saying you dislike something.

Related Roots

philSimilar

Both mean 'love,' but am is Latin and phil is Greek. am tends to mean affection or friendship between people (amiable, amicable, amorous); phil shows up in compounds for a love of something specific (philosophy = love of wisdom, philanthropy = love of mankind). Quick test: a feeling toward a person → am; a love built into a fancy compound → phil.