Definitions

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  • noun Alternative spelling of bodice ripper.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Ms. Bly discovered romance novels during high school, when they still earned the term "bodice-ripper," she said.

    Breathlessly, She Swooned—and Quoted Foucault Sophia Hollander 2011

  • I was so tired of reading standard bodice-ripper manly-men in the place of my Time Lord.

    A Poem for the Doctor rabid1st 2009

  • However, I've not picked up certain books because the cover was so repulsive (too bodice-ripper, misleading art, etc.).

    Angels' Blood Countdown: Virginia Kanta - Sea Lord ARC Nalini Singh 2009

  • "I'm obsessed with who's not invited; for Princess Di's wedding she didn't invite Barbara Cartland, who she's related to," he went on, referring to the grand dame and writer of bodice-ripper novels.

    A Royal Pronouncement Ralph Gardner Jr. 2011

  • I picked up a copy of the Grass Is Singing which had a cover illustration that made it look like a lusty bodice-ripper ....

    Bookstore Appreciation Time! 2010

  • “And what's this?” he asked as he ripped my bodice-ripper from Vincent's hands.

    The Bodice-Ripper Free School Zone Act Con Chapman 2011

  • Sanford, and take your bodice-ripper rhetoric with you.

    Resignation drumbeat grows louder in South Carolina 2009

  • The teenage Serb looks exactly as he would when he played for Aston Villa, glowering out of the team photo like the sort of bodice-ripper anti-hero whose brutish vulnerability would repel and yet strangely attract governesses and the poetically inclined daughters of the local gentry which is more or less what he did with Villa fans too, come to think of it.

    Paul Lambert needs lessons in the lexicon of the football club | Harry Pearson 2011

  • Backstage Prince and Black Bird – same mangaka, very different – one is a sweet romance in the kabuki world; the other is a bodice-ripper in the grand old tradition of the term.

    The Shôjo-Sunjeong Alphabet: B 2009

  • It's the familiar arc of many a bodice-ripper, in which the plucky, self-assured, stylish heroine faces the dangers of the wild.

    Historical Fiction 2010

Comments

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  • A sexually explicit romantic novel, usually in a historical setting, especially one involving the seduction of the heroine.

    July 24, 2008