Term of Endearment (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A term of endearment is a word or phrase used to address and/or describe a person or animal for which the speaker feels love or affection. Terms of endearment are used for a variety of reasons, such as parents addressing their children and lovers addressing each other. Such words may not, in their original use, bear any resemblance in meaning to the meaning attached when used as a term of endearment, for example calling a significant other "pumpkin." Some words are clearly derived from each other, such as "sweetheart" and "sweetie," while others bear no etymological resemblance, such as "baby" and "cutie." "Honey" (as meli) has been documented as a term of endearment in ancient Greece. "Baby" is first used in 1839 and "sugar" only appears as recently as 1930.