Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.

The line contrasts abstract language with lived experience: “love” as a mere signifier remains empty until embodied in concrete actions, relationships, and choices. It suggests that emotional ideals gain reality through particular people who make them tangible—by showing care, commitment, sacrifice, or presence. The quote also implies a skepticism toward sentimental rhetoric: saying “love” is easy, but meaning is created through what one does and endures. In a broader literary sense, it echoes a common romantic and existential theme that words are inadequate without the lived, personal encounter that fills them with substance.