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Luvvy 

Professor David Crystal 

Have you noticed how common the 'y' ('ie') ending is in English 

as a sort of colloquial suffix? A familiarity marker perhaps is a 

better way of talking about it. You talk about the telly – it's a 

television. You talk about your auntie – instead of your aunt. Of 

course, there's mummy and daddy as well. People from Australia 

are Aussies as well as Australians, and of course in proper names 

you talk about Charles and Charlie, or Susan and Susie. Very very 

common suffix.  

Not surprising then to find that new words every now and then 

come into the language which use it, and the one that has 

attracted a lot of interest recently is 'luvvy' and 'luvvies' - l-u-v-v-y 

and l-u-v-v-i-e-s. Especially in Britain, it's a kind of mockery for 

actors and actresses, considered to be rather affected – actors, 

you know, who turn up and call each other 'darling' all the time 

and go 'mwah' at each other, when they're kissing each other, and people say "oh, 

listen to those luvvies talking, those poor luvvies – there's lots of luvvy talk going 

on" - l-u-v-v-y.  

Now what's interesting is it's the spelling that's made this word so new, because 

there already was a word 'lovey' in the language, going back right to the 1960s, 

spelt l-o-v-e-y. It's a much older term of endearment. I might say "oh, come on, 

lovey!" meaning….you might hear from a bus conductor for instance, and it refers 

simply to you know, 'my dear', and it could be to a man or a woman, although 

more usually to a woman. So, what we've got is a new word 'luvvy' with a 

different spelling from the old word 'lovey' – now that doesn't happen very often 

in language change.