Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word

This is what I think:

Verse 1...Dylan ditches preconceived notions. He meets a woman who has a child out of wedlock (big deal back in those days) but the woman is ok with it. She is not beaten down or encumbered as a single mother. He sees she is free. She flippantly says that love is 'just a four letter word'. She shrugs off her difficult situation.

Verse 2...The woman is on the phone perhaps, or in conversation with the father of her child They are arguing. Maybe he is trying to win her back. His love she doesn't want. She doesn't believe in him. All he says is 'words'. Dylan realizes they are talking about an idea of love, with a child involved. He realizes tha his idea of 'love' is perhaps not the same as theirs. Their idea of love has a dimension he knows nothing about. That's why he 'kept his mouth shut'.

Verse 3...he has a revelation about attitude...about the strength of the woman to go it alone. He dismisses himself but they/ she doesn't notice. They don;t notice him because they are concerned with a stage of life that he is an infant to: having a child. He hears what she says to the father of her child. He is energized/ inspired by her strength. She doesn't want this man. He wants to find someone else who shares his realization of the spirit in the woman/ mothers mind...to be independent...to take on life as a single mother...to not slave herself to someone she obviously does not love. It's inspirational for Dylan. He is looking to strip away all of his preconceived notions...starting with the idea that a woman will submit to a man. He wants to find a place where this kind of freedom of thinking is shared. He believed in 'love' before this...but now he realizes that 'love' is not so complicated. He thought that there would be nothing more absurd than to think that love is just a 4 letter word. A true believer in 'love'. But he knows better now.

Verse 4...he can't say or interpret exactly what the relationship/ malfunctioning relationship is between the mother and the father of her child...he can only interpret their/ her words in terms of his life and how what they say impacts on his thoughts. He had thought of love as kind of foolproof...love itself to be virtuous and true. But now he does not believe that. He sees that love can come and then go just as fast. It can touch a couple but then leave them just as quick. Love is free. It belongs to no-one. He realizes that his mistakes are in his perceptions. His perceptions are not 'the thing'. He knows now that love is a casual word, especially on the lips of those who do not really understand the nature of love...such as the man and woman of the story who have had a child out of wedlock and who realize (especially the woman) that they do not love each other.

Verse 5...I think Joan Baez wrote the last verse....and of course it's all about Dylan.

don't think dylan ever recorded it. baez got a hold of it before it was even finished and began singing it at concerts. i would love to hear how dylan intended for it to be, though. he must have like joan's version better than what he had in mind

The way I understand it Dylan never finished this song and Joan Baez wrote the last verse..

"To you I had no words to say My experience was limited and underfed You were talking while I hid... After waking enough times to think I see The Holy Kiss that's supposed to last eternity Blow up in smoke, its destiny..." When the narrator hears his friend of a friend utter those words (that love is just a four letter word), his romanticized view of love is challenged; he may even feel that his belief in the noble definition of love has been reduced or cheapened by the speaker's statement. Perhaps he feel disillusioned. But he admits that he was young then. Now that he's had some experience in the world (and with love), he realizes that even marriage and commitment doesn't last. He doesn't need to argue or question the point or to be convinced about the veracity of the statement any longer: "And I do not really need to be assured/ that love is just a four-letter word..."

[Edit: capitalization]

PLEASE comment on this song it's so great. Joan Baez has a wonderful cover of this song, it's beautiful and you should listen to it.

And the meaning is kind of profound. It's about someone who is searching for and believes in love or a soul mate. But comes to realize, through the events of the song, that perhaps love is nothing more than a word. People set up their own heartbreaks and maybe there is no one person who we were "meant" to be with. Or perhaps that is just the view of a pessimist. It seems to be what the song is commenting on though.

I agree; Joan Baez's cover is great. In No Direction Home, she was talking about how she was with Bob the first time he heard the cover and he didn't remember he wrote it. He just remarked that it was a good song and she said something like 'You wrote it, you dope!'

Does anyone know if Bob Dylan ever recorded a version?

Brilliant song and a sublime version by Baez.

so this is basically a very long agreement with laocoon, but since there aren't many other comments and i like this song a lot...

to me the title/refrain plays with 3 meanings - on the one hand, it's just literally true. the word 'love' has four letters. which could also be interpreted to mean that the dream of romantic love is just an unrealistic ideal, that 'love' is no more than a mundane word we use to create the illusion of something that doesn't really exist. on the other hand, 'four-letter word' is a nice way of saying cussing. so maybe that shows that our idealized concept of love isn't only nonexistent, but might even be an abomination, a swear word, a curse - like hopeless seeking or disillusionment can always be.

so the first verse seems to be just him remembering the first time he heard the phrase from a friend who had a child and was perfectly content with her life. maybe the part about slavery could be a reference to how the traditional jobs of homemaker and mother were sometimes called 'slavery' in the women's movement, but that for some women they really aren't? or that even someone who doesn't believe in love can be happy, free from the 'slavery' of misplaced ideals... i have no idea; i can't think of anything more plausible.

in the next verse i ask myself whether he's talking about the same person as in the first. anyhow, i see an idealistic kid in 'love' with someone whom he overhears speaking to a former lover (a more important one, who holds a permanent place through a mutual child) about the fact that she doesn't believe in love. so kind of a sad, disillusioning thing.

saying goodbye unnoticed seems to refer to the person above - and it could just be saying goodbye to someone who doesn't care much about what you do, but i also thought of a kind of emotional goodbye, where you withdraw from a relationship mentally and the other person doesn't notice that everything's ended because you're both still going through the motions. and then he's just talking about carrying on his own 'games', unsuccessfully searching for this impossible ideal of a soul mate. then the last line (nothing more absurd) i'd see as him still not believing that this ideal can't be found, not believing the cynicism.

but then he reaches his own interpretation of the phrase, falls out of 'love' often enough to realize that it - at least in the form he's seeking it, the 'holy kiss' - isn't permanent, isn't real, is just an illusion that passes from couple to couple and never actually stays with anyone. - i'm not sure about the traps, maybe the idea that those kinds of expectations are traps only you can set yourself (or free yourself from). but finally, he believes the phrase.

and then at the end, maybe he's back beside the one who hurt him with that cynicism back when he was a romantic, or maybe he's just with some new idealist of his own and it seems weird to be in the opposite position - of having someone else believe in 'forever', love, etc (and maybe want that from him). i'm not sure about the cheating thing - maybe the thought of ships passing in the night and not being willing to engage in an affair, or maybe not being able to cheat and pretend to be more idealistic than he really is... and finally he can't think of anything to do but to fall back on what he's learned (maybe with a touch of spite, if he's really talking to the person mentioned in the beginning of the song) and say that idealized love is impossible or that seeking it is profanity.

It may at the start be someone who can't take hearing that love is just a four letter word [perhaps a previous lover of the woman with baby who has been overheard rejecting/saying love is merely a word?] ! So after trying to vanish, evaporate the young man/narrator comes full circle; maybe now not as caught or deeply shocked, having understood other insights but still only able to repeat what he first overheard. The lyrics try to resolve it, convince himself but is it left open (like a song wound}?

**** Verse 3....I mean "is complicated"

Sorry...I'm a few beers in.

Fuck work