lust
- intense sexual desire or appetite.
- uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.
- a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually followed by for): a lust for power.
- ardent enthusiasm; zest; relish: an enviable lust for life.
- Obsolete.
- pleasure or delight.
- desire; inclination; wish.
- to have intense sexual desire.
- to have a yearning or desire; have a strong or excessive craving (often followed by for or after).
Origin of lust
Synonyms
See more synonyms for lust on Thesaurus.comExamples from the Web for lust
Contemporary Examples
But I say onto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
She wasn't motivated by a lust for fame; she simply wanted to control the conversation.
Porn Keeps Up with the Kardashians: Belle Knox on the Mainstreaming of Adult StarsAurora Snow
September 27, 2014
The 2014 roster is even more pathetic: About Last Night, Lust for Love, And So It Goes, Sex Tape.
But despite being repeatedly shot down by experts, the tale of lust in the service of Allah is back.
And his small-scale sculpture Avarice and Lust (1887) embodies the two sins via a masculine form entangled with a female one.
Historical Examples
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
An Explanation of Luther's Small CatechismJoseph Stump
What a setting of blood and lust and flame and rapine for such a hero!
Howard Pyle's Book of PiratesHoward Pyle
The offspring of pride, and lust, and avarice, it is indigenous to the world.
The Works of Whittier, Volume VII (of VII)John Greenleaf Whittier
The mere presence of game does not breed in him a lust to slaughter something.
The ForestStewart Edward White
My God, the very thought of it fills me with the lust of conquest.
The Law-BreakersRidgwell Cullum
lust
- a strong desire for sexual gratification
- a strong desire or drive
- (intr; often foll by after or for) to have a lust (for)
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for lust
n.
Old English lust "desire, appetite, pleasure," from Proto-Germanic *lustuz (cf. Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch, German lust, Old Norse lyst, Gothic lustus "pleasure, desire, lust"), from PIE *las- "to be eager, wanton, or unruly" (cf. Latin lascivus "wanton, playful, lustful;" see lascivious).
In Middle English, "any source of pleasure or delight," also "an appetite," also "a liking for a person," also "fertility" (of soil). Sense of "sinful sexual desire, degrading animal passion" (now the main meaning) developed in late Old English from the word's use in Bible translations (e.g. lusts of the flesh to render Latin concupiscentia carnis [I John ii:16]); the cognate words in other Germanic languages tend still to mean simply "pleasure."