عِشْقٌ

(IF, S, O, Msb, K) [generally held to be a verbal noun] and ↓ مَعْشَقٌ [likewise apparently a verbal noun] (O, K) Excessive love; (IF, S, O, Msb, K;) [or passionate love; or amorous desire:] or attackment to women: (IF, Msb:) or the lover's admiration (عَجَب [for عُجْبُ in the CK is a mistranscription for عَجَبُ]) of the beloved; and it may be in chasteness and in immorality; (K;) or عِشْقٌ may be in chasteness and حُبٌّ may be in immorality: (TA:) or blindness of the sense to the faults, or defects, of the beloved: or a disease of the nature of melancholia (مَرَضٌ وَسْوَاسِىٌّ), which one procures to himself by making his thought to exercise absolute power over the approval of certain forms: (K:) Th, being asked respecting الحُبّ and العِشْق, which of them is the more commendable, said, الحُبّ, because in العِشْق is excess: (TA:) [see also حُبٌّ:] Ibn-Seenà, [whom we commonly call Avicenna,] in a treatise on العِشْق, [regarding it as meaning natural propension,] says that it is not peculiar to the human species, but pervades all existing things of the celestial and the elemental and the vegetable and the mineral and the animal, and that its meaning is not perceived nor known, and is rendered more obscure by explanation thereof: (MF, TA:) it is said in the A that العِشْق is derived from العَشَقَةُ, which means the [plant commonly called] لَبْلَاب, because it twines upon trees, and cleaves to them. (TA.)