MUTUAL AFFECTION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does mutual affection mean? 

• MUTUAL AFFECTION (noun)
  The noun MUTUAL AFFECTION has 1 sense:

1. sympathy of each person for the other

  Familiarity information: MUTUAL AFFECTION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MUTUAL AFFECTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Sympathy of each person for the other

Classified under:

Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas

Synonyms:

mutual affection; mutual understanding

Hypernyms ("mutual affection" is a kind of...):

sympathy (a relation of affinity or harmony between people; whatever affects one correspondingly affects the other)

 Context examples 

Your case is a very unfortunate one; you seem to me to be surrounded with difficulties, and you will have need of all your mutual affection to support you under them.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Their mutual affection will steady them; and I flatter myself they will settle so quietly, and live in so rational a manner, as may in time make their past imprudence forgotten.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection—of the strongest kind—was the result.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It had every recommendation to him; and while honouring her for what she had done under the influence of her present indifference, honouring her in rather stronger terms than Sir Thomas could quite echo, he was most earnest in hoping, and sanguine in believing, that it would be a match at last, and that, united by mutual affection, it would appear that their dispositions were as exactly fitted to make them blessed in each other, as he was now beginning seriously to consider them.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance; but still, saved as we all are, by some comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments; and envied them nothing but that seemingly perfect good understanding and agreement together, that good-humoured mutual affection, of which she had known so little herself with either of her sisters.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

It was very interesting to me to see them together, not only on account of their mutual affection, but because of the strong personal resemblance between them, and the manner in which what was haughty or impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in her, to a gracious dignity.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

And when farther pressed, had added, that in her opinion their dispositions were so totally dissimilar as to make mutual affection incompatible; and that they were unfitted for each other by nature, education, and habit.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

She acknowledged, therefore, that though she had never been informed by themselves of the terms on which they stood with each other, of their mutual affection she had no doubt, and of their correspondence she was not astonished to hear.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adele, kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus sat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable—when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added that he saw Adele was prete a croquer sa petite maman Anglaise—I half ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

They were brought together by mutual affection, with the warmest approbation of their real friends; their intimate knowledge of each other seemed to make their happiness certain—and they only wanted something to live upon.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)