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
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
Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan star in the Paramount+ “Fatal Attraction” series that reimagines the 1987 erotic thriller that starred Glenn Close as the terrifying mistress who “will not be ignored.”
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 26, 2023
Note that I did not say that any of it was erotic.
From Washington Post • Jan. 25, 2023
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.
