prurience

Use Prurience in a sentence

adjective

having, inclined to have, or characterized by lascivious or lustful thoughts, desires, etc.

causing lasciviousness or lust.

having a restless desire or longing.

Origin:
1630–40; < Latin prūrient- (stem of prūriēns), present participle of prūrīre to itch

Related forms

pru·ri·ence, pru·ri·en·cy, noun

pru·ri·ent·ly, adverb

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Link To prurience

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World English Dictionary

prurient (ˈprʊərɪənt)

—*adj*
1.	unusually or morbidly interested in sexual thoughts or practices
2.	exciting or encouraging lustfulness; erotic

[C17: from Latin prūrīre to itch, to lust after]

'prurience

—n

'pruriently

—*adv*

Relevant Questions

What Is Pruriency?

00:10

Prurience is always a great word to know.

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a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

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prurient (ˈprʊərɪənt)

—*adj*
1.	unusually or morbidly interested in sexual thoughts or practices
2.	exciting or encouraging lustfulness; erotic

[C17: from Latin prūrīre to itch, to lust after]

'prurience

—n

'pruriently

—*adv*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

prurient

1639, "itching," later "having an itching desire" (1653), esp. "lascivious, lewd," (1746), from L. prurientem (nom. pruriens), prp. of prurire "to itch, long for, be wanton," perhaps related to pruna "glowing coals."

Example sentences

Characters are never fully brought to life, and there is a rather cynical

pandering to prurience.

Public figures with blameless private lives may find the media's habitual

prurience so unbearable that they leave office.

The tension between innocence and prurience is exquisite, if not unprecedented.

It's apparent that nothing in this world is immutable-neither the balance of

power, the meaning of prurience nor physical beauty.

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Matching Quote

"Pornography is not objectionable simply because it arouses sexual desire or lust or prurience in the mind of the reader or spectator; this is a silly Victorian notion. A great many nonpornographic works—including some parts of the Bible—excite sexual desire very successfully. What is distinctive about pornography is that, in the words of D.H. Lawrence, it attempts "to do dirt on [sex].... [It is an] insult to a vital human relationship." In other words, pornography differs from erotic art in that its whole purpose is to treat human beings obscenely, to deprive human beings of their specifically human dimension. That is what obscenity is all about. It is light years removed from any kind of carefree sensuality—there is no continuum between Fielding's Tom Jones and the Marquis de Sade's Justine. These works have quite opposite intentions."

-Irving Kristol