pleasure centrepleasure centern.
/ˈplɛʒə sɛntə/, U.S. /ˈplɛʒər ˌsɛn(t)ər/ 1. A place offering a wide range of leisure activities; a place known for offering amusements and attractions, esp. of a sensual or sexual nature.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > entertainment > place of amusement or entertainment > [noun] > town or city as
open town1720
pleasure centre1877
bright lights1916
1877 Daily Nevada State Jrnl. 9 May 4/1 Its proximity to San Francisco will doubtless make it one of the most important health and pleasure centers of the State.
1903 Fort Wayne (Indiana) Daily News 5 Jan. 5/1 Preparations are on foot to make the Rome City resort a greater pleasure center than ever.
1912 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 18 268 One might easily make an anthology of his sayings..; costly pleasure-centers are ‘the cream-pots of the country's wealth-production’.
1929 French Rev. 3 62 France..suffers..from the pre-eminence of Paris as the world's pleasure centre.
1956 J. S. Holmes & A. van Marle tr. H. M. van Randwijk World on Move 185 (caption) Bao-dai, the former emperor of Annam, was called from his well-loved pleasure centre on the Riviera and made head of the new state [sc. Vietnam] in 1949.
1999 Ethics 110 84 The policies they [sc. egalitarians] should support include more health care for men..; state-sponsored pleasure centers for men.
2. A reward centre in the brain (see reward n. 6e); (also occasionally) a part of the body in which sensations of pleasure can be felt.
ΘΚΠ
the world > life > the body > nervous system > cerebrospinal axis > brain > parts of brain > [noun] > as (supposed) seat of faculty > seats of specific faculties
sensorium1613
sensitory1649
sensory1653
sensoriolum1715
respiratory centre1841
Broca1875
writing centre1878
speech-centre1881
heat-centre1884
speech area1885
pleasure centre1892
language area1898
motorium1900
isocortex1934
visceral brain1949
satiety centre1951
limbic system1952
reward cell1956
1892 Philos. Rev. 1 634 On the other hand, there is not the faintest indication, to my knowledge, of the existence of a pleasure centre in the brain.
1941 National Math. Mag. 15 386 The beginning of an æsthetic theory of visual forms is based on a network of fibers connecting cerebral centers governing the eye-muscles and a postulated ‘pleasure center’.
1971 H. C. Lindgren & D. Byrne Psychol. (ed. 3) viii. 261 When electrodes are implanted in the pleasure center of a rat's brain, it will press a treadle to give himself [sic] a split second of electric stimulation.
1999 Gender & Society 13 716 True empowerment had everything to do with the ‘new’ female pleasure center, the clitoris, and had little to do with the vagina.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, June 2006; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1877