erotic
/ɪˈrɒtɪk
/adjective
Relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement: her book of erotic fantasies...
- To pluck food from a nude woman at a party is certainly sensual and quite likely erotic, but sexual?
- But to see these images as either overtly sexual or even primarily erotic would be a big mistake.
- Are you ready to take a look at the effects of the sexual revolution on erotic cinema?
Synonyms
sexually arousing, sexually exciting, sexually stimulating;
titillating, salacious, prurient, lubricious, suggestive;
pornographic, sexually explicit, lewd, smutty, hard-core, soft-core, dirty, off colour, indecent, improper, filthy, vulgar, crude;
libidinous, lustful, lascivious, lecherous, licentious;
sexual, sexy, sensual, carnal, venereal, amatory;
seductive, alluring, tantalizing, desirable, aphrodisiac;
racy, risqué, ribald, naughty, bawdy, earthy, spicy, Rabelaisian;
erogenous, erotogenic
informal blue, X-rated, steamy, raunchy, randy, horny
euphemistic adult
formal concupiscent
rare venereous, anacreontic
Derivatives
erotically
/ adverb ...- Included in the draft legislation is a 10-year jail sentence and fines of more than $40,000 for ‘locking lips’ in public or dancing erotically.
- A little-known Federal law allows individuals to send a Prohibitory Order against companies that are sending unsolicited sexually provocative or erotically arousing mail.
- It's depicting it very erotically, very excitedly.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from French érotique, from Greek erōtikos, from erōs, erōt- 'sexual love'.
French, the language of love, gave us erotic, although the ultimate source was Greek erōs ‘love’, and the name of the Greek god of love, the son of Aphrodite and the equivalent of the Roman Cupid who gets his name for the Latin for ‘desire’, the source of cupidity (Late Middle English). He is usually pictured as a naked boy with wings, carrying a bow and arrow to wound his victims with the pains of love. Erogenous (late 19th century) comes from the same source.
Rhymes
- stricture
- strictured
- stride
- stridency
- strident
- stridently
- strider
- stridor
- stridulant
- stridulate
- stridulation
- stridulatory
- stridulous
- strife
- strigil
- strigose
- strikable
- strike
- strike a balance
- strike a blow for (or against)
- strike a blow for (or at/against)
- strike a chord
- strike a discordant note
- strike a light
- strike an attitude (or pose)