Word of the Day

Thursday December 31, 2009

amatory [AM-uh-tor-ee; -tohr-]

adjective

Hoare says the play was written with Gertrude Lawrence, Coward's favorite actress and frequent co-star, in mind for the role of "Lady Alexandra, or Sandra, a Diana Cooper-Edwina Mountbatten figure," i.e., a titled Englishwoman of blithe spirits and an active, highly unconventional amatory life.

Jonathan Yardley, "Noel Coward, the author? What a novel idea, darling", The Washington Post, Oct 23, 2009
John Keats was a Romantic poet. "Bright Star," which tells the tale of Keats and Fanny Brawne, the love of his short life, is a romantic movie. The vernacular of popular culture and the somewhat specialized language of literary history assign different meanings to that word, but the achievement of Jane Campion's learned and ravishing new film is to fuse them, to trace the comminglings and collisions of poetic creation and amatory passion.

A. O. Scott, "Keats and His Beloved in an Ode to Hot, Sexy English Chastity", New York Times, Sep 16, 2009
By the side of those glittering amatory escapades of his on the grand scale, with which Europe rang, he seems to have pursued a sober married existence, without upbraidings from his own conscience, or curtain-lectures from his meek duchess, who bore him eight children.

Edmund Gosse (1849 - 1928) An English poet, author and critic. "Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France"

Origin of the Word

Amatory, approximately 1500, derives from from Latin amatorius "loving," from amator "a lover."