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  1. onanism love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Masturbation.
  2. n. Coitus interruptus.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Gratification of the sexual appetite in an unnatural way.

Wiktionary

  1. n. ejaculating outside the vagina during intercourse; (the performing of) coitus interruptus
  2. n. masturbation

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. Self-pollution; masturbation.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. manual stimulation of the genital organs (of yourself or another) for sexual pleasure
  2. n. a method of birth control in which coitus is initiated but the penis is deliberately withdrawn before ejaculation

Etymologies

  1. From the biblical name Onan: In the Book of Genesis, Onan, son of Judah, in fulfillment of the laws of levirate marriage was to impregnate his brother Er's widow, Tamar, in order to raise offspring from the union in his brother's name. In order to avoid raising descendants for his late brother, however, Onan spilled his semen on the ground when he went in to his brother's wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. (Genesis 38:9). Thus the word Onanism was coined, meaning ejaculating outside the vagina, or masturbation (because this also spills semen, rather than using it for procreation). (Wiktionary)
  2. After Onan, son of Judah (Genesis 38:9). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “So, the word onanism now is used commonly to mean masturbation the Japanese have borrowed the word as well in onaru.”

    Onanism

  • “From him the extreme sexual perversion called onanism has its name.”

    Exposition of Genesis: Volume 1

  • “It also may be postulated that if wasting of seed is the real reason for prohibitions against homosex, then the Bible would have also explicitly addressed spilling of semen by self sexual stimulation, often called onanism by Orthodox Judaism, relating it to the Divine execution of Onan (Gn. 38: 4-10) for coitus interruptus.”

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en]

  • “But marketing alone cannot explain why "onanism" and related terms began to show up in the great eighteenth-century encyclopedias or why one of the most influential physicians in France, the celebrated Samuel Auguste David Tissot, took up the idea of masturbation as a dangerous illness or why Tissot's 1760 work, L'Onanisme, became an instant European literary sensation.”

    Me, Myself, and I

  • “Tissot included only manual self-abuse under the term "onanism;" shortly afterward, Voltaire, in his _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, took up the subject, giving it a wider meaning and still further popularizing it.”

    Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 The Evolution of Modesty; The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity; Auto-Erotism

  • “Against such condemnatory terms as "mutual masturbation," "onanism," and "sodomy," men in the nineteenth century struggled for a new, affirmative language of sexual love.”

    planet x-berg.de

  • “Pope Pius XI condemned this so-called sin of "onanism" because he misunderstood the biblical story.”

    Planet Atheism

  • “Indeed, these desks which are open in front also facilitate surveillance of the scholars from the moral point of view; because, always seated, placed side by side without any possibility of spiritual communion, their heads dazed by the continuous vociferation of the teacher, these children very often contract vicious habits, such as onanism, which originate in the school itself.”

    Spontaneous Activity in Education

  • “Then again, maybe it will never be published, makingany anxiety over reader impact pure onanism.”

    bleh « paper fruit

  • “The most frequent (if not most preferred!) sexual outlet of most people most of the time is masturbation, making onanism the statistical norm from which all else is deviation.”

    r_urell: William F. Buckley: Father of Modern "Conservatism"

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synonyms (2)

Words with the same meaning

  1. self-pollution
  1. masturbation

hypernyms (3)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. birth prevention
  1. family planning
  1. birth control

same context (22)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. satyriasis
  2. pederasty
  3. erethism
  4. arousability
  1. gonad
  2. infibulation
  3. polyamory
  4. fisherfolk
  1. lawbreaker
  2. angiogram
  3. traumatism
  4. localisation
  1. anoxia
  2. commentsbefore
  3. oedema
  4. vasodilatation
  1. sodomy
  2. vasculitis
  3. strabismus
  4. bestiality
  1. enteritis
  2. fornication

reverse dictionary (4)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. self-abuse
  1. masturbation
  1. onanist
  1. onanistic

tags (2)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. -ism
  1. behead

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Comments

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  • chained_bear Shevek, that's a very interesting post. I knew that onanism originally meant something different than what is usually meant today, but not the whole backstory. Fascinating. Thanks for posting it. Jul 21, 2008

  • johnmperry Yes. Sorry, I try not to waste my enire life here. So I put in my two penn'orth then go away and do something else. Then come back to see wassup.

    As plethora correctly interpreted, you had written a statement of the form 'a was worse than b', implying that b was bad. I asked how b was bad. Jul 20, 2008

  • shevek Ah, I see. I wasn't implying that coitus interruptus is bad. I was more explaining why it isn't.

    (Halakhically the Sin of Onan is still considered to be the spilling of seed though, AFAIK. The history I outlined could perhaps be used by a Rabbi to rule otherwise, but that is relatively unlikely to happen any time soon.) Jul 20, 2008

  • plethora I think he means that by saying something is worse than coitus interruptus, you're implying that coitus interruptus is bad to begin with. So why is it bad?

    That's how I understood it, anyway. Jul 20, 2008

  • shevek Huh? I don't understand your question. Jul 20, 2008

  • johnmperry Why is coitus interruptus bad that something can be worse than it? Jul 20, 2008

  • shevek What Onan did was actually worse than coitus interruptus. Tamar had originally married Onan's brother, but the brother died before they produced an heir to carry the bother's name. Onan was supposed to marry Tamar (a Levirate marriage), give her a male child to carry on the deceased husband's name, and then divorce her. Tamar was a very attractive woman, so Onan was all too happy to enter the Levirate marriage, but he refused to give her a child because he wanted to keep having sex with her. Essentially he used her.

    The reason onanism has come to mean "spilling seed" is that early medieval Jewish commentators, in enumerating the 613 commandments, did not want to remind their less-than-friendly Christian neighbors of the ancient, but no longer practiced institution of Levirate marriage, so they interpreted the passage to be a commandment against masturbation and coitus interruptus. Around this same time Jews discontinued the practice of polygamy. Jul 20, 2008

  • johnmperry coitus interruptus: And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. Jul 20, 2008

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‘onanism’ has been looked up 3860 times, loved by 5 people, added to 47 lists, commented on 8 times, and has a Scrabble score of 9.