More Words I'm Looking Up

beloved

I just came across in a document I'm editing: "... those noise-cancelling headphones beloved of frequent flyers."

I don't remember ever hearing "beloved of" before. I thought it was always "beloved by." I tried some wondering and Googling, but the hits I got didn't help: 1.5 million for "beloved by," but most of them followed by the name Toni Morrison. 1.1 million hits for "beloved of," including lots of constructions like, "His beloved of twenty years."

Still, at the top of the hit list was a link to a freedictionary.com page that included under "Examples from Classic Literature": There were Emperors beloved of literary men, Emperors beloved of the people ...


Still learning something new every day ...