noun
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the quality or state of being sensual
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excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of sensuality
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English sensualite, from Old French, from Late Latin sēnsuālitās; equivalent to sensual + -ity
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.
See Examples For:
A strikingly potent Frida, Isabel Leonard used her velvety mezzo to find the drama of the artist’s remembered torment as well as the undulating sensuality of her love for painting and colors.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 18, 2026
On screen, Brigitte Bardot was a cocktail of kittenish charm and continental sensuality, but it was an image she grew to loathe - eventually abandoning her career to campaign for animal welfare.
From BBC ● Dec. 31, 2025
Perhaps it’s that Manfred is so swaggeringly confident, Galitzine’s embodiment of fluid sensuality standing in stark contrast to Monroe’s stiff, anxious, breathy performance as Cherry.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2025
In portraiture, like Sargent’s Dr. Pozzi at Home or Raphael’s Portrait of a Cardinal, red can communicate faith, sensuality or power.
From Salon ● May 17, 2024
Essentially, Andrew Vane was very clean, with an instinctive revulsion from whatever savoured of animalism or sensuality.
From The Transgression of Andrew Vane a novel by Carryl, Guy Wetmore
The former took refuge in the mystic sensualities of the worship of Isis, the latter in the Stoical rules of life.
From Essays and Lectures by Wilde, Oscar
They renounce the world, towns, sensualities, pleasures, vanities, pride, interests.
From Les Misérables by Hapgood, Isabel Florence
He next argues how men of noblesse ought to leave sensualities and delights.
From The Boke of Noblesse by Unknown
But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities, can never fully attain this high excellence—the knowledge of God, the object of all rational inquiry.
From The Old Roman World, : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization. by Lord, John
Nor had we any more understanding for Renoir's rich sensualities of tone; nor did the mastery with which he achieves an absence of shadow appeal to us.
From Confessions of a Young Man by Moore, George (George Augustus)
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.
