A house that needs tender loving care is a house with problems the agent would rather not list. The phrase describes the work as affection, so that a new roof, a foundation crack, and a kitchen from 1961 are reframed as a relationship the buyer is invited to begin.

Real-estate copy is the dictionary’s richest seam, because it is a genre in which everyone has agreed that the words do not mean what they say. “Cozy,” elsewhere in these pages, means small. “Charming” means old. “Needs TLC” means bring a contractor. The buyer translates, the seller is spared, and the language goes on meaning nothing.

What makes this one worth its own entry is the direction of the lie. Most euphemisms make the speaker’s action sound better. This one makes the buyer’s future labor sound like love. The cost is moved onto the reader and then renamed so the reader will not notice.