tender loving care

Compassionate, caring, protective attention or treatment. Sometimes abbreviated to TLC, especially when using the term more jocularly or lightheartedly. I find that giving these patients tender loving care is as beneficial to them as their medication, sometimes more so. Your plants just need a little tender loving care and they'll be green and healthy again in no time!

tender loving care

Also, TLC. Solicitous and compassionate care, as in These houseplants sure have had tender loving care, or Older house for sale, needs some renovation and TLC. Originally used to describe the work of care-givers such as nurses, this term today is often used ironically or euphemistically. [Second half of 1900s]

TLC

Acronym for tender loving care. In modern times this phrase is believed to have originated in a hospital or other sick-care setting, where it alludes to kind and solicitous treatment by nurses. From the mid-1900s on it caught on in a more general way, particularly among songwriters, according to wordsmith Nigel Rees, who found nearly a dozen songs with this title written between 1960 and 1983. Today the term, both spelled out and abbreviated, is applied to kind or gentle treatment for almost anything—a pet, person, plant, automobile, and so on. It has just about replaced the almost synonymous tea and sympathy, meaning special kindness shown to someone who is upset. This term was always most common in Britain, where a cup of tea is standard treatment in such situations. It gained currency as the title of a play by Robert Anderson and a motion picture based on it (1956) about a prep school boy’s affair with a teacher’s wife, but it has largely died out, at least in America.

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References in periodicals archive

"Tender Loving Care" is available in two DVD flavors: DVD-ROM for computers, and DVD Video for viewing on television screens.

IT'S NOT JUST A GAME

Special thanks to Llewelyn Ward, Llandudno Hospital for their tender loving care and to all at Rashmi Surgery, Old Colwyn.Thanks also, to the Rev.

ROBERTS - DIANA David and family [...]

Summer sun can be damaging for your hair so give it a bit of extra tender loving care.

Use your head in the sun

A GARDENER who has grown a 5ft tall spring cabbage puts his success down to "tender loving care and hen muck".

Cabbage patch giant

Mrs Booth, 59, who owns a string of hotels, said: "The Racecourse needs a bit of tender loving care."

HOTEL BOSS BIDS FOR DRAGONS

With personal knowledge of the environmental responsibilities and demands associated in providing warm understanding, sympathetic and tender loving care, to those in both family and residential homes, I offer to Linda Philips and her staff at Ty Mawr Home For The Elderly, Roath, Cardiff, my sincere congratulations.

Ty Mawr is a shining light

Selling agents Andrew Craig say the property would "benefit from a little tender loving care".

Desire for own home hasn't died out

LIZ Hurley will have to administer more tender loving care to lover Arun Nayar.

3am: Liz Hurley

Stag and Pheasant landlady Penny West, who hates gardening, decided it was time her poorly patch of grass was given some tender loving care, but realised the only way to get a result was to make an offer regulars could not refuse.

Gardening help on tap for Penny

There is an acronym that describes this - oh, yes, TLC (Tender Loving Care).

In search of the missing acronym

TENDER Loving Care is a company that certainly lives up to its name.

TLC -- a family business that lives up to its name

NEW from Charles Worthington, the Sensitive range aims to offer a bit of tender loving care thanks to its gentle aloe vera and cucumber.

Treat those tresses

The judge told doctors to give their daughter the maximum comfort and time with her parents and to let her meet her end with their 'tender loving care'.

Parents told: Let baby die

Big and affectionate, she will need extra tender loving care because of a heart condition.

Big cuddles needed for loving Meg; GIVE A DOG A HOME

The cute litter of terrier puppies escaped being drowned by a cruel owner in south Wales and are in need of some tender loving care.

Stocking up on bundles of fun