Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or tending to arouse sexual desire.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to or prompted by love; treating of love; amorous.
- noun An amorous composition or poem.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An amorous composition or poem.
- adjective Of or pertaining to the passion of love; treating of love; amatory.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement.
- noun An
amorous composition orpoem .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective giving sexual pleasure; sexually arousing
- noun an erotic person
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, which is the term for sexual love itself, as well as the gods name.
Eros 2002
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Honey Money, a recent book that coined the term "erotic capital" defined as "beauty, sex appeal, liveliness, a talent for dressing well, charm and social skills and sexual competence".
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011
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Ms. Lagarde possesses an abundance of what I call "erotic capital," and she has used it knowingly and to great advantage.
The Untapped Power of Erotic Capital Catherine Hakim 2011
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The twist the story then takes into the erotic is a step out of narrative convention and into a kind of fantastic freefall that leaves all the usual responses to family breakdown far behind.
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Needing to create a compromise between fear and desire, he devised what he called erotic friendship.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Kundera, Milan, 1929- 1984
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…we can even use the word erotic to describe a yearning for unity to overcome separation.
The Templar Revelation Lynn Picknett 2004
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…we can even use the word erotic to describe a yearning for unity to overcome separation.
The Templar Revelation Lynn Picknett 2004
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He was reviled and revered for his glossy spreads of naked co-eds in erotic photos, which followed "the philosophy of voyeurism," he once said.
Bob Guccione's life in photos Melissa Bell 2010
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The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that, in erotic terms, is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.
Lance Mannion: 2010
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What one person finds erotic is not the same for another.
CuriousJon commented on the word erotic
My first and only exposure to the word LUSTALGIA happened in the mid-1960s in Los Angeles. A morning announcer used it in a now-forgotten sentence as I drove to graduate school at UCLA. The sense was nostalgic memories with lust as a theme.
For the 'Free Love' movement then in near full-flower, I believe it is a word that ought to be more widely used, at least to ones self, with a glimmer of a smile and a memory flash!
Probably best considered a noun or adjective: "The small group of friends from the 60s drifted into exchanging sweetly lustalgic memories of what had been, what might have been, what should have been, and, luckily, what never had been more than a memory of a private, still powerful fantasy."
September 21, 2009