Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person who derives sexual gratification from observing the naked bodies or sexual acts of others, especially from a secret vantage point.
  • noun An enthusiastic observer of sordid or sensational subjects.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person who derives sexual pleasure from secretly observing other people, especially when such people are engaged in some sexual activity.
  • noun An obsessive observer of sensational or sordid subjects.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a viewer who enjoys seeing the sex acts or sex organs of others

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Old French, one who lies in wait, from voir, to see, from Latin vidēre, to see; see weid- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French voyeur, from the verb voir ("to see")

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Examples

  • I just came back from my blog wanderings in voyeur mode and found myself engrossed with the last one because I so identified with it.

    notes from the peanut gallery Dean Francis Alfar 2003

  • I just came back from my blog wanderings in voyeur mode and found myself engrossed with the last one because I so identified with it.

    Archive 2003-04-01 Dean Francis Alfar 2003

  • In the industrial poverty of Wigan, in Barcelona, and finally in the Blitz, the voyeur is transformed and redeemed as the witness, the one who can testify on behalf of the silent.

    Orwell and Bohemia 1994

  • And indeed from the get-go we find ourselves, for better or for worse, restricted to the events that are captured from the voyeur aka cameraman Hud behind the video camera.

    CLOVERFIELD | Obsessed With Film 2008

  • Not that I want to be known as a voyeur, or want to be intrusive; but if you're going to show how much fun you had, you'd show yourself snogging Linda.

    Hanging on, waiting for the oil rubdown please... Elizabeth McClung 2008

  • She was one of a very few administrators able to access the images, and the students 'attorney is calling her a "voyeur" - largely because of an email exchange between her and a colleague, who noted that seeing the webcam footage was kind of like a "soap opera" - to which Cafiero replied, "I know, I love it!" iPhone tracking that some schools in Japan were implementing and noted the similarities to Cory Doctorow's science fiction novel

    Geeks are Sexy Technology News Casey 2010

  • She was one of a very few administrators able to access the images, and the students 'attorney is calling her a "voyeur" - largely because of an email exchange between her and a colleague, who noted that seeing the webcam footage was kind of like a "soap opera" - to which Cafiero replied, "I know, I love it!" iPhone tracking that some schools in Japan were implementing and noted the similarities to Cory Doctorow's science fiction novel

    Geeks are Sexy Technology News Casey 2010

  • Something about that makes it just that much more dirty; if he could just actually see her he wouldn't be frantically fantasizing about it - wouldn't feel quite so much like a voyeur, which is completely counterintuitive.

    Wraithbait 2009

  • Want to spend more time outside, but can't tear yourself away from the "voyeur" shows on TV?

    Science Voyeurism 2008

  • It may be mere coincidence that the New York Reality TV School seminar was set in a kind of voyeur heaven: a half-glass theater-district penthouse from which you can see faces peering at you from nearby bedrooms.

    In Fame's Antechamber 2008

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