sensuously

American  

[sen-shoo-uhs-lee] / ˈsɛn ʃu əs li /

adverb

1. in a way that gratifies or delights the senses.

   The still life drips sensuously with color, life, and stylistic innovation.

   We swooned over the sensuously edible little Nantucket bay scallops, seared but nearly raw, and topped with thin garlic coins.

2. in a way that affects or can be perceived by the senses.

   An ideal exists outside peoples’ consciousness, unrelated to the external, sensuously perceptible world.

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Other Word Forms

• antisensuously adverb
• hypersensuously adverb
• nonsensuously adverb
• subsensuously adverb
• supersensuously adverb
• unsensuously adverb

Etymology

Origin of sensuously

sensuous ( def. ) + -ly

Example Sentences

And her works go about answering them studiously but sensuously — with earnestness, wit, whimsy, self-awareness and music that ranges freely among, for a start, Baroque madrigals, power ballads and barbed modernism.

From New York Times • Feb. 20, 2023

But the thing the oil painter renders most sensuously is fabric.

From Washington Post • Jan. 6, 2022

It springs from deeply rooted impulses to adorn the self, to communicate sensuously, to participate in the social collectivity and lend it shape and legibility.

From New York Times • Dec. 22, 2020

Could we experience in the everyday space and time obviously and sensuously inseparable?

From The Guardian • Mar. 31, 2019

The pigs lay, bloated bags of fat, sensuously enjoying the shadows under the trees.

From "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding