When you love someone, do you dole it out carefully — or do you pour it over them like rain?
There's a word that answers that question with its whole being, and it hides a downpour inside it. The word is lavish. We use it to mean abundant, extravagant, generous without stint — a lavish feast, a lavish gift, lavish praise, lavishing love and attention on someone. And it's a word about pouring things out in abundance rather than doling them out carefully. But here's the buried treasure, the thing most people never know: lavish comes from an old French word, lavasse, meaning a downpour, a deluge of rain — which traces all the way back to the Latin lavare, to wash. So at the very root of lavish is rain. A flood of water. A downpour. To be lavish is to pour something out the way the sky pours out rain in a storm — abundantly, freely, drenchingly, without measure.
Isn't that a beautiful image to have been carrying, unnoticed, every time we've used this word? When you lavish love on someone, the word is quietly saying you rain it down on them. You pour it over them like a downpour, like a flood, holding nothing back. And that image tells you everything about the difference between two ways of giving. Because there's a way of giving that's careful, measured, doled out — a drop here, a drop there, always with an eye on the supply, always a little held back in reserve. And then there's the lavish way. The downpour way. The way that opens the sky and lets everything fall at once, abundantly, generously, without counting the drops.
Now, lavish has a shadow, and I want to name it honestly, because the word can cut both ways. Because a downpour can be too much. Lavish can tip into excess, into wastefulness, into the extravagance that's really about show rather than love — the lavish display meant to impress, the lavish spending that's actually about ego, the flood that overwhelms rather than nourishes. Not all pouring-out is good. A deluge can drown as well as water. So when we use lavish for reckless extravagance, for the vulgar excess of someone showing off their wealth, we're catching the shadow side of the downpour — rain that's become a flood, abundance that's become waste, generosity that's curdled into display.
But set that shadow aside for a moment, because I want to dwell on the beautiful side, the side that matters most for how we love. Because there's a profound difference between people who are stingy with their love and people who are lavish with it — and it's one of the most important differences there is. Some people dole out their affection, their praise, their attention, their tenderness, carefully, sparingly, as if it were a scarce resource that might run out. They give a little, and hold back a lot, always keeping some in reserve, always a bit guarded even with the people closest to them. And other people are lavish. They pour it out. They tell you they love you, freely and often. They praise generously. They give their full attention, their whole warmth, holding nothing back. They rain their love down like a downpour, drenching the people around them in it.
And here's the thing the rain image teaches us, the thing that makes lavish love wiser than it looks. Rain doesn't run out. That's the secret. The sky pours down a whole storm and is not depleted — the water rises back up, forms new clouds, falls again. The downpour isn't a withdrawal from a fixed and shrinking account. It's part of a cycle that renews itself. And love is far more like rain than like money. The people who are stingy with their love, who hoard it and dole it out, are operating on the belief that love is scarce, that it can run out, that they have to conserve it. But love isn't like that. Love, lavished, tends to generate more love. The downpour returns. You do not run out of love by pouring it out. You run out of it by hoarding it until it goes stale in the reservoir.
So there's a quiet argument, hidden in the roots of this word, for being lavish with the things that actually renew themselves. Be lavish with your love — pour it out, tell people, hold nothing back, because it doesn't deplete you the way you fear. Be lavish with praise, with encouragement, with attention, with kindness — these are downpours that cost you nothing you won't get back, and that transform the people they fall on. So many of us are stingy with exactly the things we should be lavish with, doling out love and praise as if they were scarce, while being lavish with the things we should be careful about. We have it backwards. The word lavish, with its downpour at the root, quietly suggests the correction: pour out freely the things that renew, like rain, and you'll find you have more, not less.
And think of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of lavish love. To be genuinely drenched in someone's affection and attention and warmth — not doled out, not measured, but poured over you like a downpour. It's one of the most nourishing feelings a human being can have. To feel that someone isn't holding back with you, isn't conserving, isn't guarding their heart — but is raining their whole love down on you, abundantly, freely, like a storm that isn't afraid of running dry. That's what it means to be loved lavishly. And it's a gift you can give, too — the downpour, the flood, the generous rain of a love that has stopped believing it needs to be rationed.
Here's what I'll leave you standing under. If love is more like rain than like money — if it renews when you pour it out and goes stale when you hoard it — then what have you been doling out carefully, drop by drop, that you could instead let fall like a downpour? And who in your life is standing there, a little parched, waiting for you to finally open the sky?
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