romance [ME] The Romance languages are the European languages descended from Latin, and the word romance came via Old French from Latin Romanicus ‘Roman’. A romance became a medieval narrative in the local language that described the adventures of a hero of chivalry. These adventures tended to be so wild and improbable that the word came to be associated with any work of fiction depicting events remote from everyday life or, because love was often a subject, dealing with love. The senses ‘idealized or sentimental love’ and ‘a love affair’ are Victorian. Romantic is a more recent word from the mid 17th century. At the end of the 18th century the Romantic movement arose, exemplified by the writers Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats and painters such as William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, and Goya.