Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To commit fornication.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Arched; vaulted or arched over like an oven or furnace, concave within and convex without; hollowed out underneath.
- In bot.: Overarched with fornices, as the throat of the corolla of the forget-me-not.
- Overarching: as, a fornicate appendage. Also
forniciform . - To have illicit sexual intercourse: said of an unmarried person.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To commit fornication; to have unlawful sexual intercourse.
- adjective Vaulted like an oven or furnace; arched.
- adjective (Bot.) Arching over; overarched.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Shaped like or
arch orvault ; resembling afornix . - verb intransitive To
commit fornication .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb have sex without being married
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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But in fact, Paul uses "fornicate" in myriad ways, and in only one verse -- I Corinthians 7: 9 -- does it seem to refer to sex before marriage.
Rev. Astrid Storm: Students of Christianity, Yes. Virginity, No. 2008
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As for Paul, whose writings make up much of the New Testament outside the Gospels, I had been taught that the word sometimes translated as "fornicate" (porneia), which Paul uses quite a lot, frequently refers to premarital sex -- an assumption that's common in conservative Christian writings on this topic.
Rev. Astrid Storm: Students of Christianity, Yes. Virginity, No. 2008
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Given that people were sharing cabins, some had opted to "fornicate" on deck in view of anyone walking past in the early hours of the morning, rather than disturb their cabin mates, he said.
IOL: News 2009
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Given that people were sharing cabins, some had opted to "fornicate" on deck in view of anyone walking past in the early hours of the morning, rather than disturb their cabin mates, he said.
IOL: News 2009
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And thank heavens they used "fornicate" in lieu of "fuck" in the above missive; otherwise, one might have considered this a bit off-color.
SFist 2009
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HUFFPOST DC: BECAUSE THIS IS ACTUALLY A CITY, APPARENTLY - Washington, D.C. is so much more than a smattering of neoclassical and Beaux-Arts federal buildings in which socially-challenged poli-sci grads pretend to conduct the business of the nation and make plans to fornicate with one another after pro forma drinks following spectacles of middle school athletics.
HUFFPOST HILL - Rick Perry Is The North Star Of Texas Lobbyists Eliot Nelson 2011
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Jane Leavy's ballplayers curse, fornicate, fight, drink, tell tasteless jokes and generally make Pete Rose seem like Cary Grant.
Taking Fiction Out to the Ballgame Allen Barra 2011
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For example, feel free to repeat “the” and “and” and “fornicate” as many times as you like throughout your brilliant manuscript.
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Roth had a very interesting and business-like approach to selecting the women he would fornicate with at concerts.
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In Tarantino's Kill Bill, genres are mashed, smashed, and encouraged to fornicate in order to form whole new subgenres - it's a blend of action movie, anime, horror, graphic novel, cheesy samurai movie and Chinese shadow puppetry (i.e. the scene where Uma Thurman fights the bad guys/girls behind a screen in silhouette.)
hernesheir commented on the word fornicate
From Benjamin Daydon Jackson's A Glossary of Botanic Terms, with their Derivation and Accent: "provided with scale-like appendages in the corolla-tube", referring to the flowers of some plant species.
February 17, 2011
yarb commented on the word fornicate
Brilliant!
February 17, 2011
deinonychus commented on the word fornicate
Also a protist, member of the clade Fornicata, that is part of Excavata.
June 5, 2012