erotic
Americanadjective
-
arousing or satisfying sexual desire.
an erotic dance.
- Synonyms:
- erogenous, aphrodisiac, sexy, sensuous
-
of, relating to, or treating of sexual love; amatory.
an erotic novel.
-
subject to or marked by strong sexual desire.
noun
-
an erotic poem.
-
an erotic person.
adjective
-
of, concerning, or arousing sexual desire or giving sexual pleasure
-
marked by strong sexual desire or being especially sensitive to sexual stimulation
noun
Usage
What does erotic mean? Erotic is an adjective used to describe things that are or are intended to be sexually arousing or pleasurable, as in erotic novel or erotic dancing. Example: It’s a regular bookstore, but it has an erotic literature section. Erotic can also be used to describe something that relates to or involves sex or sexual content, as in The virus was linked to ads on erotic websites. The related noun erotica refers to works like films and literature that are primarily erotic or that contain erotic elements. Material that contains graphic sexual content is often referred to as pornography or porn (epecially when that’s all it contains). Labelling things as erotic may be an attempt to indicate that sexual elements are only part of the content, or simply to make them sound more tasteful or highbrow. Much less commonly, erotic can be used as a noun to refer to a person who has intense sexual desire is easily sexually stimulated.
Other Word Forms
- antierotic adjective
- erotically adverb
- nonerotic adjective
- nonerotically adverb
- pseudoerotic adjective
- pseudoerotically adverb
- quasi-erotic adjective
- quasi-erotically adverb
- unerotic adjective
Etymology
Origin of erotic
1615–25; < Greek erōtikós of love, caused by love, given to love, equivalent to erōt- (stem of érōs ) Eros + -ikos -ic
Explanation
Use erotic to describe a sexy, sexy person. What makes that person so sexy? Maybe his or her erotic attitude or looks, meaning "arousing." The word erotic came into English from French — of course! — and can be traced back to the Greek word erōtikos, from erōs or erōt-, meaning “sexual love.” The adjective erotic is often used to describe a person’s carnal desires, but it can be used to characterize anything that’s sexual in nature or that arouses sexual desires, such as the erotic themes in a racy movie, an erotic dancer in a club, or erotic images in a painting.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“In the literary texts that we have, female gladiators are not described in any kind of an erotic context,” Anna McCollough, an Ohio State researcher, told LiveScience in 2012.
From Salon • Nov. 26, 2024
Morgan Fairchild, who played Perry's on-screen mother and erotic novel writer Nora Bing, said: "I'm heartbroken about the untimely death of my 'son', Matthew Perry."
From BBC • Oct. 29, 2023
In the end, this book is not an erotic thriller, nor a comment on #MeToo, nor an elegiac coming-of-age story about surviving a parent’s death.
From Los Angeles Times • May 11, 2022
But where Rodin mobilized light to create effects of erotic vitality, Giacometti expressed an equally forceful, almost Beckettian or Kafka-esque sense of stuckness and insecurity.
From Washington Post • Mar. 30, 2022
It was not an erotic love, but a love of shared madness, of conversations that were electric and boundless, of ambitions that ran beyond realities.*
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
