Each term of endearment has its own connotations, which are highly dependent on the situation they are used in, such as tone of voice, body language, and social context. Saying "Hey baby, you're looking good" varies greatly from the use "Baby, don't swim at the deep end of the pool!" Certain terms can be perceived as offensive or patronizing, depending on the context and speaker.[2]
Feminists have complained that while 'terms of endearment are words used by close friends, families, and lovers...they are also used on women by perfect strangers...double standard' because 'between strangers terms of endearment imply a judgment of incompetence on the part of the target'.[3] Others have pointed out however that, in an informal setting like a pub, 'the use of terms of endearment here was a positive politeness strategy. A term like "mate", or "sweetie", shifts the focus of the request away from its imposition...toward the camaraderie existing between interlocutors'.[4]
Terms of endearment often 'make use of internal rhyme...[with] still current forms such as lovey-dovey, which appeared in 1819, and honey bunny',[5] or of other duplications. Some such combinations seem nonsensical, odd, or too long, however, such as baby pie or love dear, and are seldom used.
Terms of endearment can lose their original meaning over the course of time: thus for example 'in the early twentieth century the word crumpet was used as a term of endearment by both sexes', before diminishing later into a 'term of objectification'[6] for women.
When proper names escape one, terms of endearment can always substitute. This is described by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan: The 'opacity of the ejaculations of love, when, lacking a signifier to name the object of its epithalamium, it employs the crudest trickery of the imaginary. "I'll eat you up....Sweetie!" "You'll love it...Rat!"'.[7]
Psychiatrist Eric Berne identified the marital game of "Sweetheart", where 'White makes a subtly derogatory remark about Mrs White, disguised as anecdote, and ends: "Isn't that right, sweetheart?" Mrs. White tends to agree...because it would seem surly to disagree with a man who calls one "sweetheart" in public'.[8] Berne points out that 'the more tense the situation, and the closer the game is to exposure, the more bitterly is the word "sweetheart" enunciated'; while the wife's antithesis is either 'to reply: "Yes, honey!"' or to 'respond with a similar "Sweetheart" type anecdote about the husband, saying in effect, "You have a dirty face too, dear"'.[9]
French has all kinds of interesting terms of endearment, including a rather odd assortment of barnyard animals...[like] mon canard [my duck]'[10] something which may be compared to the British 'baby talk...duckie'.[11]