Lukewarm is barely warm: the temperature of a bath you left too long, or tea you forgot on the desk. Neither hot nor cold, and a small disappointment because of it.
Recipes use it plainly and with no complaint — dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water, because hot water would kill it. The bigger use is about feeling: a lukewarm response, lukewarm applause, a lukewarm review, meaning polite and unexcited, which stings more than being hated. Tepid means the same and sounds more formal. Note that lukewarm is one word with no hyphen, and the luke in it has nothing whatever to do with the name Luke.
1adjectivelukewarmOnly slightly warm, between hot and cold.~7%
“The tea had gone lukewarm while he was on the phone.”
Patternlukewarm + noun (water, tea, coffee) · go lukewarm · a lukewarm response
synonyms: tepid
2adjectivehalfShowing little enthusiasm or interest.~93%
“The plan got a lukewarm response from everyone in the room.”
synonyms: half-hearted, unenthusiastic
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
lukeWARM → only just WARM
Only warm, not hot: lukewarm tea is what you get when you forget your cup for twenty minutes.
hooks ontowarm
The luke in lukewarm is an old word for warm that died on its own. Middle English leukwarm joined lew — tepid, from Old English hlēowe, warm or sunny — to warm, so the word says warm twice over. Dutch keeps the first half in leukwater, lukewarm water, and German says the same thing as lauwarm.
Middle English
leukwarm
English, today
lukewarm
Built from
From Middle English leukwarm. From Middle English leukwarm, lukewarm (“lukewarm, tepid”), equivalent to luke + warm. Compare stq luukwoarm (“lukewarm”), German Low German luukwarm (“lukewarm”); first element is related to Dutch leuk (“lukewarm”), as in leukwater (“lukewarm water”). Compare also West Frisian lijwarm (“lukewarm”), Afrikaans louwarm (“lukewarm”), German Low German lowarm, luwarm (“lukewarm”), German lauwarm (“lukewarm”). First element believed to be an alteration of Middle English lew (“tepid”) (> English dialectal lew), from Old English hlēowe (“warm, sunny”), from Proto-Germanic hliwjaz, hlēwaz, hlūmaz, hleumaz (“warm”), from Proto-Indo-European ḱal(w)e-, ḱel(w)e-, k(')lēw- (“warm, hot”). Cognate with Dutch lauw (“tepid”), German lau (“lukewarm”), Faroese lýggjur (“warm”), Swedish ljum (“lukewarm”), ljummen (“lukewarm”) and ly (“warm”), Danish lummer (“muggy”), Danish and Norwegian lunken (“tepid”), dialectal Swedish ljummen (“lukewarm”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA