Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To commit fornication.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To have illicit sexual intercourse: said of an unmarried person.
  • 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.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Vaulted like an oven or furnace; arched.
  • adjective (Bot.) Arching over; overarched.
  • intransitive verb To commit fornication; to have unlawful sexual intercourse.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Shaped like or arch or vault; resembling a fornix.
  • verb intransitive To commit fornication.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb have sex without being married

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin fornicārī, fornicāt-, from fornix, fornic-, vault, vaulted cellar, brothel; see gwher- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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.

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Examples

  • 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. 2008

  • 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. 2008

  • 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.

    IOL: News 2009

  • 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.

    IOL: News 2009

  • And thank heavens they used "fornicate" in lieu of "fuck" in the above missive; otherwise, one might have considered this a bit off-color.

    SFist 2009

  • 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.

    HUFFPOST HILL - Rick Perry Is The North Star Of Texas Lobbyists Eliot Nelson 2011

  • Jane Leavy's ballplayers curse, fornicate, fight, drink, tell tasteless jokes and generally make Pete Rose seem like Cary Grant.

    Taking Fiction Out to the Ballgame Allen Barra 2011

  • For example, feel free to repeat “the” and “and” and “fornicate” as many times as you like throughout your brilliant manuscript.

    How to Write a Novel in 30 Days | Write to Done 2009

  • Roth had a very interesting and business-like approach to selecting the women he would fornicate with at concerts.

    Lindsay Lohan On “Big Brother” 2009

  • 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.)

    MIND MELD: The Best Genre Crossovers 2010

Comments

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  • 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.

    February 17, 2011

  • Brilliant!

    February 17, 2011

  • Also a protist, member of the clade Fornicata, that is part of Excavata.

    June 5, 2012