Affection

//əˈfɛk.ʃən// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of affecting or acting upon. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    a positive feeling of liking wordnet
  3. 3
    The state of being affected, especially: a change in, or alteration of, the emotional state of a person or other animal, caused by a subjective affect (a subjective feeling or emotion), which arises in response to a stimulus which may result from either thought or perception. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    An attribute; a quality or property; a condition. countable, uncountable

    "A Porism is a proposition in which it is proposed to demonstrate that some one thing, or more things than one, are given, to which, as also to each of innumerable other things, not given indeed, but which have the same relation to those which are given, it is to be shewn that there belongs some common affection described in the proposition."

  5. 5
    An emotion; a feeling or natural impulse acting upon and swaying the mind. countable, uncountable

    "Our affections for wild animals are distributed very unevenly. Take insects."

Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    A feeling of love or strong attachment. countable, uncountable

    "I have a lot of affection for my little sister."

  2. 7
    A disease; a morbid symptom; a malady. archaic, countable, uncountable

    "a pulmonary affection"

Verb
  1. 1
    To feel affection for. archaic

    "Why, truth is truth, I do not think my lady Isabella ever much affectioned my young lord, your son: yet he was a sweet youth as one should see."

Example

More examples

"The baby transferred its affection to its new mother."

Etymology

From Middle English affection, affeccion, affeccioun, from Old French affection, from Latin affectiōnem, from affectiō; equivalent to affect + -ion.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.