illustrated profiles of a man and a woman set against the backdrop of a red rose

A Red, Red Rose

by Robert Burns

Start Free Trial

Student Question

Does the word "luve" in "A Red, Red Rose" mean "love"?

Quick answer:

Yes, "luve" in "A Red, Red Rose" means "love." During Robert Burns' time, spelling was not standardized, and variations were common. Burns lived during the Early Modern Period, when spelling conventions were still developing. In the poem, "luve" is an alternate spelling of "love," similar to how "melodie" is "melody" and "weel" is "well." It's likely Burns used these spellings for stylistic purposes rather than reflecting his everyday speech.

Expert Answers

An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

The short answer: Yes.

Standardized spelling is something very new to the English language, as strange as that may seem to us. Go back just two hundred years or so and you'll see people spelling words all sorts of ways. There wasn't the standardized educational system that we have today, and there were far fewer dictionaries and other sources that we now turn to when we want to check the "correct" spelling of a word.

Robert Burns, the author of the poem you name, lived from 1759-1796, toward the end of the stage of English known as the Early Modern Period. By this time, a standardized spelling had pretty much already been developed and disseminated, at least to the middle and upper classes, but it wasn't identical to our standardized spellng today.

Here are some words from his poem paired with a modern (American English) spelling:

luve = love
melodie = melody
weel = well

On a final note, I don't have much proof to support my claim, but I believe that Burns did not write his poem in the way that he actually would have spoken in everyday life. He uses the word "thou" in the poem, for example. The word "thou" had already pretty much been entirely displaced by "you" and become a fossil by the time he was writing this poem.

Get Ahead with eNotes

Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.

Get 48 Hours Free Access
Approved by eNotes Editorial