Meaning
The classic emblem of falling in love suddenly and involuntarily. Cupid, the Roman god of desire, is imagined as a winged boy who shoots arrows that pierce the heart; whoever is hit is filled with a love they never chose. A heart transfixed by an arrow remains the standard drawing for romantic love on valentines and in cartoons. Lives as an allusion rather than a lemmatized idiom in most dictionaries. Ovid's two-arrow lore (gold kindles desire, lead repels it) is usually dropped in modern use. Compare this site's 'steal someone's heart' entry for the same wounded-heart territory. The Shakespeare and 1790 chapbook lines were verified verbatim on Wikisource. Regional use: Universal English; the underlying classical image is shared across European languages and art.
Origin
The imagery is classical. Wikipedia's Cupid article traces the god to Latin Cupido (Wiktionary: from cupido, desire, from cupio, to desire), counterpart of Greek Eros; his iconography acquired the bow and arrow in the Hellenistic period, and late-antiquity writers fixed his attributes as arrow and torch - Isidore of Seville (died 636) explained them as love that wounds and inflames. Ovid's Metamorphoses supplies the best-known arrow story: a golden arrow fills Apollo with desire while a lead one makes Daphne flee him, and a 15th-century Scottish poem, The Kingis Quair, gives Cupid three arrows of gold, silver and steel. In English, Shakespeare's Romeo says of Rosaline, 'she'll not be hit / With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit' (Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1; first printed 1597) - wording verified on Wikisource - and a 1790 chapbook poem rhymes 'By fly Cupid's arrow in love was beguil'd'. Cambridge's current entry still defines Cupid as the Roman god represented as a winged boy who shoots arrows at people to make them love each other, and a 1909 valentine card pictured in the Wikipedia article shows the arrow-pierced heart in full commercial flower.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- Cupid's dart
- love's arrow
- struck by Cupid's arrow
Usage Examples
- One dance at the summer fair, and Cupid's arrow found him.
- She had planned to stay single through university, but Cupid's arrow had other plans.
- When he introduced us, I could see Cupid's arrow strike them both at once.