Other forms: romantics
Romantic means full of love and the feelings of lovers — a romantic dinner, a romantic gesture, he is not very romantic. It describes both the thing and the person who goes in for it.
There is a second sense meaning idealistic and impractical: a romantic view of village life, romantic notions about farming. That use is gently critical and quite common in writing. And with a capital letter, Romantic means belonging to the artistic movement of the early nineteenth century — Wordsworth, Turner, Beethoven — which is about nature, feeling and the sublime rather than about love. Note romance, which covers both the feeling and the genre of fiction.
1adjectiveromanticConnected with love between people.
“They went somewhere romantic for the anniversary.”
2adjectiveidealisticIdealistic and not very practical.
“He has a rather romantic idea of what farming involves.”
3nounnatureSomebody who is romantic by nature.
“She is a romantic and always has been.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
romantic is a quality of feeling.
From romaunt + -ic. From romant + -ic, or borrowed from Latin romanticus (“of a poem having qualities of a romance”). Compare French romantique, which is borrowed from English. Also compare Spanish romántico, Portuguese romântico, Italian romantico, Dutch romantisch, and German romantisch and Romantiker (“a composer of Romantic music”), all of which are borrowed from English or French.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA