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lascivious

las·civ·i·ous

UK/ləˈsɪvɪ.əs/UK/-vi.əs/US/ləˈsɪvi.əs/

adjective

What it means

  1. Wanton; lewd, driven by lust, lustful.

    The colonel and his sponsor made a queer contrast: Greystone [the sponsor] long and stringy, with a face that seemed as if a cold wind was eternally playing on it. […] But there was not a more lascivious reprobate and gourmand in all London than this same Greystone.

    1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter I, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC
    1 more example

    Sir, I will answer anything. But I beseech you, if't be your pleasure and most wise consent, as partly I find it is, that your fair daughter, at this odd-even and dull watch o'the night, transported with no worse nor better guard but with a knave of common hire, a gondolier, to the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor – if this be known to you, and your allowance, we then have done you bold and saucy wrongs; but if you know not this, my manners tell me we have your wrong rebuke.

    c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]

    Synonyms: wanton, lewd, lustful

In a sentence

The colonel and his sponsor made a queer contrast: Greystone [the sponsor] long and stringy, with a face that seemed as if a cold wind was eternally playing on it. […] But there was not a more lascivious reprobate and gourmand in all London than this same Greystone.

1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter I, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

Where it comes from

  1. Latinlascīviōsus
  2. Englishlascivious

From Latin lascīviōsus, from lascīvia (“sportiveness, lustfulness”).

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