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Saturday October 24, 2009

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lascivious [luh-SIV-ee-uhs]

adjective

1. Lewd; lustful; as lascivious desires.
2. Tending to arouse lustful or sexual desires.

• They watched him as he inspected the plane. They lined up at the gate, blocking traffic on the concourse, to get a glimpse of "Sully!" His every move drew bursts of applause. "He's like Madonna," one woman said, in what surely was the first comparison of a 58-year-old commercial pilot with a white moustache to a lascivious pop star.
  Patrick McGeehan, "After Detour in Hudson, Sullenberger Finishes Flight", New York Times, Oct 2, 2009
• Henry VIII's was a quicksilver monarchy, underscored by the fact of his six wives in rather quick succession. Henry is routinely portrayed as the lascivious royal who, in his quest to get a male heir, went to war with the pope - a definitive break that led to the separation of the English Church from Rome.
  Vikram Johri, "Toils and tactics in tudor life", Washington Times, Sep 27, 2009
• At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious hula hula—a dance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated notion of limb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity of movement and accuracy of "time."
  Mark Twain (1835-1910) American author and humorist. Roughing It, Part 7 (1880)

Origin of the Word

Lascivious, approximately 1425, derives from Late Latin lasciviosus, from Latin lascivia "lewdness, playfulness," from lascivus "lewd, playful."