prurient

All weekend reporters in eastern Ukraine were walking a bizarre tightrope, of prurience, politesse, and ghoulishness.

The California obscenity statute defines “prurience” as “a morbid, degrading, unhealthy interest in sex.”

The vulgar call it lust, and blush and hide their faces; in their folly is the shame, in their prurience the disgrace.

The prurience and prudery which have poisoned sexual life in the past are alike rendered impossible.