Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To commit fornication.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Arched; vaulted or arched over like an oven or furnace, concave within and convex without; hollowed out underneath.
- In bot.: Overarched with fornices, as the throat of the corolla of the forget-me-not.
- Overarching: as, a fornicate appendage. Also forniciform.
- To have illicit sexual intercourse: said of an unmarried person.
Wiktionary
- adj. Shaped like or arch or vault; resembling a fornix.
- v. intransitive To commit fornication.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Vaulted like an oven or furnace; arched.
- adj. (Bot.) Arching over; overarched.
- v. To commit fornication; to have unlawful sexual intercourse.
WordNet 3.0
- v. have sex without being married
Etymologies
- From Latin fornix ("arch, vault; brothel") Arch as in a passageway, it was customary for courtesans of the era to wait for their customers out of the rain under these archways. (Wiktionary)
- Late Latin fornicārī, fornicāt-, from fornix, fornic-, vault, vaulted cellar, brothel; see gwher- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“As for Paul, whose writings make up much of the New Testament outside the Gospels, I had been taught that the word sometimes translated as "fornicate" (porneia), which Paul uses quite a lot, frequently refers to premarital sex -- an assumption that's common in conservative Christian writings on this topic.”
Rev. Astrid Storm: Students of Christianity, Yes. Virginity, No.
“But in fact, Paul uses "fornicate" in myriad ways, and in only one verse -- I Corinthians 7: 9 -- does it seem to refer to sex before marriage.”
Rev. Astrid Storm: Students of Christianity, Yes. Virginity, No.
“Given that people were sharing cabins, some had opted to "fornicate" on deck in view of anyone walking past in the early hours of the morning, rather than disturb their cabin mates, he said.”
“And thank heavens they used "fornicate" in lieu of "fuck" in the above missive; otherwise, one might have considered this a bit off-color.”
“Roth had a very interesting and business-like approach to selecting the women he would fornicate with at concerts.”
“In Tarantino's Kill Bill, genres are mashed, smashed, and encouraged to fornicate in order to form whole new subgenres - it's a blend of action movie, anime, horror, graphic novel, cheesy samurai movie and Chinese shadow puppetry (i.e. the scene where Uma Thurman fights the bad guys/girls behind a screen in silhouette.)”
“HUFFPOST DC: BECAUSE THIS IS ACTUALLY A CITY, APPARENTLY - Washington, D.C. is so much more than a smattering of neoclassical and Beaux-Arts federal buildings in which socially-challenged poli-sci grads pretend to conduct the business of the nation and make plans to fornicate with one another after pro forma drinks following spectacles of middle school athletics.”
The Huffington Post: HUFFPOST HILL - Rick Perry Is The North Star Of Texas Lobbyists
“Jane Leavy's ballplayers curse, fornicate, fight, drink, tell tasteless jokes and generally make Pete Rose seem like Cary Grant.”
“For example, feel free to repeat “the” and “and” and “fornicate” as many times as you like throughout your brilliant manuscript.”
“There are many people out there who are under the false assumption that our cowboys here in Texas like to fornicate with sheep.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fornicate’.
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phrontistery - f
from phrontistery.info
fabaceous, fabiform, fabulist, faburden, face-cord, facetiae, facia, facinorous, factious, factitious, factitive, factive and 418 more...
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A Galimafrée of Plant Anatomy & Morph...
A hodgepodge, jumble, jambalaya, *gallimaufry, circus and tent revival of plant anatomy and morphology terms and phrases - its a big tent, and no tickets are required.
*array, collecti...naked bud, leaf blade, brochidodromous, serrate, cork cambium, rhizomatous, flower stalk, deciduous sepal, petal, whorl, nectar gland, stamen and 1348 more...
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tnt07106's list
College Party Words
loaded, waxed, ripped, scrump, retarded, laced, dominate, jungle juice, loose, fornicate, practice making b..., horizontal mambo and 1 more...
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Human Sexuality
paraphilia, salirophilia, shibari, open-list, phimosis, teleiophile, agapet, basorexia, Pomosexual, cybersex, outercourse, fornicate
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EN - rare verbs
fornicate, enfranchise, tweet, natter, fetter, devil, cork, bunker, canoe, backstroke, carom, queer and 52 more...
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single-celled
Excavata, fornicate, Fornicata, Carpediemonas, Mixotricha paradoxa, Chaos, oomycete, dog vomit slime mold, Vampyrella, radiolarian, Discoba, Euglena and 76 more...
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Hate
Words I can't stand
moist, shunt, falafels, dank, chyle, pus, puss, girthy, impregnation, encroached, orifice, fondling and 3 more...
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Kalli's Words
redundant, munchkin, escapade, natch, boom, fap, geek, nocturnal, pedantic, tactile, conversant, oxymoron and 188 more...
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Something I -ate
Words in which the "-ate" suffix is used to mean "having," "resembling," "-like."
roseate, acaudate, lyrate, pinnate, acerate, falcate, pedunculate, petiolate, oblate, tessellate, spatulate, fimbriate and 158 more...
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pagecrusher's Words
fugu, ilk, rigamarole, superfluous, dearth, sacrosanct, moniker, bifurcate, villainous, onus, brazen, odin and 268 more...
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Favorite Words
symbologist, articulate, sushi, chinchilla, flagrant, cosmic, perforate, alacrity, gooseflesh, xenophobic, bamboozle, squirrel and 90 more...
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sort of sexy
pressure, press, urgency, squeezing, influence, compel, push, tease, thrust, full, drive, urge on and 99 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Vocab ##5
appint, monarch, counterpart, muse, bestow, unwitting, aghast, admonish, wage, decree, cavalry, phalanx and 126 more...
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Malachi_Constant's Words
triumverate, pandemic, parsnip, delineate, zamboni, parka, laser, swoop, malevolent, benevolent, fracas, tipsy and 372 more...
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kirstenio's Words
lascivious, transcendant, phantasmagoria, salacious, beatitude, solitude, pseudo, pretentious, inanity, sublimation, clobber, obscurity and 186 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fornicate.

deinonychus Also a protist, member of the clade Fornicata, that is part of Excavata. Jun 5, 2012
yarb Brilliant! Feb 17, 2011
hernesheir From Benjamin Daydon Jackson's A Glossary of Botanic Terms, with their Derivation and Accent: "provided with scale-like appendages in the corolla-tube", referring to the flowers of some plant species. Feb 17, 2011