Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Characterized by an inordinate interest in sex.
- adjective Arousing or appealing to an inordinate interest in sex.
- adjective Inordinately interested in matters of sex; lascivious.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Itching; having an eager desire or longing for something.
- Inclined to lascivious thought; of an unclean habit of mind; sensual.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Uneasy with desire; itching; especially, having a lascivious curiosity or propensity; lustful.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Uneasy with
desire ;itching ; especially, having alascivious anxiety orpropensity ;lustful . - adjective Arousing or appealing to
sexual desire . - adjective Curious, especially inappropriately so.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective characterized by lust
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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I have watched you and your crew, how you preach up selfish ambition for divine charity and call prurient longings celestial love, while you blaspheme that very marriage from whose mysteries you borrow all your cant.
The Saint's Tragedy Charles Kingsley 1847
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Odd Iain that I have not heard the word "prurient" in many months yet both you and David Cameron use it on the same day about the same subject.
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Here's my answer, and please don't be offended if I read some kind of prurient interest into your query.
um... Holly 2005
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Here's my answer, and please don't be offended if I read some kind of prurient interest into your query.
Archive 2005-07-01 Holly 2005
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There is nothing "prurient" about his enthusiastic interest; far from it, Di Filippo deals with such activities with warm good humor, engaging prose, and, when the story dictates, with love.
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Berlusconi's amoral business practices can never translate into financial success on a national scale, and his sexual ethics will only promote the kind of prurient, hypocritical society that Murdoch would appreciate.
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Berlusconi's amoral business practices can never translate into financial success on a national scale, and his sexual ethics will only promote the kind of prurient, hypocritical society that Murdoch would appreciate.
Forbes.com: News 2011
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(An interesting aside for those who enjoy etymology: the word "prurient" is derived from the same root as pruritus - it just refers to a different sort of "itch.")
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First of all, Tennessee is remarkably lacking in any kind of prurient accommodations along its interstate, and secondly, on the first trip, we stopped and ate at places that served cold beer and roasted goat, and on the second trip we stopped to eat at places that didn't serve black people.
Looky, Daddy! 2009
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Michael Malone, director of photography at the San Jose Mercury News, said the call was an easy one and that his paper would never print such a "prurient" photo, which he said was "not something people need to see."
unknown title 2009
abiohphobia commented on the word prurient
"...at times the shock presents as an imploding clock -
a Dali-esque reminder that if we invented Time (and
hoo! we did) we could invent alternatives far more sublime -
and truer to the prurient experience of ogling Eternity:
close enough for us to sense its meat."
October 27, 2007
seanahan commented on the word prurient
That's a bizarre quote.
October 27, 2007
abiohphobia commented on the word prurient
it's from a poem entitled 'bubble baths and crystal meth'
October 29, 2007
seanahan commented on the word prurient
That's a bizarre title.
October 30, 2007
Prolagus commented on the word prurient
TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.
(David Foster Wallace)
June 26, 2008
100000232338334 commented on the word prurient
"I didn't believe for a minute Bill was only concerned with my safety, but I didn't want to believe jealousy brought him to my window, or some kind of prurient curiosity."-Dead as a Doornail, by Charlaine Harris
May 19, 2011