Word of the Day Archive
Thursday February 14, 2008
amative \AM-uh-tiv\ , adjective:
Pertaining to or disposed to love, especially sexual love; full of love; amorous.
Theoretically, any given left-kisser should meet more right-kissers and, over an amative lifetime, or even good year in junior high, be subtly pressured to shift to the right in order to land a wet one -- or just avoid a broken nose. No?
-- Donald G. McNeil Jr., "Pucker Up, Sweetie, and Tilt Right", New York Times, February 13, 2003
In the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of another nap even more often than it does to amative imaginings, Tennyson to the contrary notwithstanding.
-- "Touch of Spring Fever Makes Whole World Kin", Science News, May 23, 1931
Well, poetry has been erotic, or amative, or something of that sort -- at least a vast deal of it has -- ever since it stopped being epic.
-- Helen Deutsch, "Death, desire and translation: on the poetry of Propertius", TriQuarterly, March 22, 1993
Amative comes from Medieval Latin amativus, "capable of love," from the past participle of Latin amare, "to love."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for amative
