TIME wears away love (fancies)

Insights

Erosion of infatuation

Early ardor often relies on novelty and idealization; time functions like friction, sanding away projection until the glow dims or disappears.

Temperance of passion

Even when love endures, time ‘qualifies’ its heat—transforming flame into embers, moving from rapture to steadier companionship.

Unmasking of fancies

‘Fancies’ signals whims and fantasies; duration exposes daydreams as unsustainable, distinguishing deep attachment from passing appetites.

Memory’s dilution

Recollection blurs edges; repeated days and competing demands soften impressions, so once-urgent feeling loses salience.

Social fashions fade

Beyond romance, ‘fancies’ can be crazes and enthusiasms; time’s wear reveals what was merely trendy versus what merits lasting devotion.

Early modern nuance

Writers like Lyly contrast love ‘bred by time and fancy’ with love later ‘banished’ by the same forces; the proverb points chiefly at capricious attractions, not covenantal bonds.

Shakespearean echo

Shakespeare notes that ‘Time qualifies the spark and fire of it,’ aligning with the proverb’s chemistry: intensity cools as elements equilibrate.

Language of ‘fancy’

In Tudor–Stuart English, ‘fancy’ meant whim, imagination, or infatuation; the line is less cynical about love itself than skeptical of its airy, self-delighting forms.

Psychology of habituation

Hedonic adaptation and reduced novelty predict a drop in arousal over time; bonds that mature shift from passionate to companionate love, trading thrill for reliability.

Counterpoint and condition

Time does the wearing when love is unmaintained; rituals of care, shared projects, and renewed novelty can retexture the surface that friction would otherwise thin.

Proverbial constellation

Paired with ‘Time tries the truth’ and ‘Time and thought tame grief,’ this saying rounds out time’s ambivalence: it heals, tests, and also abrades—especially what is shallow.

Rhetorical Devices

Personification

Time is cast as an agent that ‘wears,’ granting force and intention to an abstract duration.

Metaphor of abrasion

Love becomes a surface subject to friction; the concrete craft image makes emotional change tactile and memorable.

Alliteration

The ‘w’ chime in ‘wears away’ gives the proverb a soft grind of sound mirroring its meaning.

Ellipsis/gnomic brevity

A compact structure—no hedges, few articles—delivers categorical punch and folk authority.

Synecdoche

‘Fancies’ stands for the larger class of lightweight attachments and whims, broadening the maxim’s reach beyond romance.