Is this the world's most romantic word?

A pair of tropical ''kissing fish'' kiss at a pet store in Shanghai in this February 14, 2006 file photo. ''Kissing fish'', called ''jie wen yu'' locally, are popular gifts during Valentine's Day in China.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - "Amour", the French word for love, has been voted the most romantic word in the world in a pre-Valentine's Day survey of language experts.

It narrowly beat "amore", the Italian word for love, although Italian was named the world's most romantic language.

Italian words also dominated the top places in the list of most romantic words

"Belissima", which is both Italian and Spanish for "very beautiful", was voted the third most romantic word, while "tesoro", which is both Italian and Spanish for "treasure" (as in "Mi tesoro"/"My treasure") came fourth.

The survey was conducted by London-based Today Translations which polled over 320 of its linguists.

After Italian, they found the second-most romantic language was French, which was way ahead of Spanish and English in joint third place.

In the same poll, the firm asked its linguists to pick the least romantic-sounding way to say, "I love you" in any language.

The winner was Japan's "watakushi-wa anata-wo ai shimasu", ahead of the Welsh "rydw i'n dy garu di" and "qaparha", which, the firm noted, is Klingon, as spoken in the Star Trek universe.

(London newsroom: stephen.addison.reuters.com@reuters.net)