a. [f. LOVE sb. + WORTHY a.] Worthy to be loved.
a. 1240. Wohunge, in Cott. Hom., 269. Inwið þe ane arn alle þe þinges igedered þat eauer muhen maken ani mon luuewurði to oðer.
1621. Lady M. Wroth, Urania, 289. Neræna, the most loue-worthy of her sex.
1633. W. Struther, True Happiness, 31. If these small goods be love-worthy, with what a love should we adhere to the fountain-good.
1867. Thirlwall, Lett. (1881), I. 278. It may happen … that … the child makes the painful discovery that the person whom it most tenderly loves is not loveworthy.
1880. Swinburne, Stud. Shaks., 227. A living god-garland of the noblest earth-born brothers and love-worthiest heaven-born sister.
Hence Loveworthiness.
1867. Thirlwall, Lett. (1881), I. 278. The perception of His loveworthiness must tend to swallow up our sense of benefits received from him.
1880. Greenville (PA) Advance Argus, 1 Jan., 1/6. The damage [of an engagement publicly repudiated] is threefold … by the slur cast on the loveworthinesss of the woman, through this rejection after closer knowledge in the matter where loveworthiness is the one essential.
1899. Miss Frances Power Cobbe, in Daily News, 27 May, 7/1. Among the trivial pleasures and sordid strife of the world they recall to us for ever the nobility and love-worthiness of human nature.
