He wants love, not gifts, from his people, a love which on their part does not fawn for other gifts from him in return, like the cupboard love of kittens purring for cream.
Not that there was any cupboard love in his little sweet—she was a bundle of affection.
Perhaps my enthusiasm for California sounds a little like cupboard love.
Then, with the rather bitter cynicism of the old, he wondered for a second whether it was not cupboard love which made Irene put up with him.
Examplesofcupboard love
cupboard love
I hope that it is not justcupboardloveon the part of the regions.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under theOpen Parliament Licence v3.0
Cupboardloveof this sort, of course, demanded the maintenance of a well-stocked larder.
From theCambridge English Corpus
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.