old flame:

(plural: ‘old flames‘)

a ‘flame’ in this context = a lover; a sweet-heart

a person with whom someone had a romantic (love) affair in the past but somehow did not last long, but the person who loved him/her still remembers and feels good (romantic) about him/her,

a woman dreaming of her old flame

e.g.

John is very happy now because he ran into his old flame last night at the party and they both planned to meet again some time next week. (i.e. he met the woman he used to love sometime ago and decided to continue his discontinued love affair with her)

My grandma often says that her old flame was an officer in the Armed Forces and died fighting for our country.

People like Betsey ruin their careers and marriages by looking up old flames — just a phone call, a cup of coffee and the spark becomes ‘flame’ and burns them up.

For an article that explains this phrase, please click here, for an article that warns us of the bad consequences of looking us our old flame, please click here and for a news article that shows us how we come across this phrase in our daily browsing, please click here.