Friday, November 21, 2008

amatory

amatory

amatory \AM-uh-tor-ee; -tohr-\, adjective:

of love; expressing love, especially sexual

She's cranky, self-absorbed and a compulsive flirt with a long series of amatory conquests to her record.
-- Carol Shields, His Kisses Taste Like Bubble Gum," review of The Love Letter, by Cathleen Schine, New York Times, May 27, 1991
Even Piejack, who harbors a delusion that his mangled hand has an amatory upside, is at heart a pedestrian perv, and Boyd, the telemarketer, is more an annoyance than the end of the world.
-- John Leland, Key Party," review of Nature Girl, by Carl Hiaasen, New York Times, December 2, 2002
Therese at first seems cut from familiar femme-fatale cloth, and Jack seems a direct descendant of a long line of noir chumps who follow their amatory urges down hell's rabbit hole.
-- Eddie Muller, The dangers of rescuing damsels in so-called distress," review of Belonging, by Ron Butlin, San Francisco Chronicle, June 30, 2003

by 1599, from Latin amatorius "of or pertaining to love," from Latin amator "lover"

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