Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Gratification of the sexual desire.
  • noun The act or exercise of hunting; the sports of the chase; hunting.
  • noun Beasts of the chase; game.
  • noun A kennel for hunting-dogs.

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

  • noun The art, act, or practice of hunting; the sports of the chase.
  • noun Sexual love; sexual intercourse; coition.

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

  • noun The hunting of wild animals.
  • noun Game animals.
  • noun The pursuit of sexual pleasure or indulgence.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English venerie, from Middle French, from venerie ("hunting"), from Latin vēnor ("I hunt").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Mediaeval Latin veneria, from venus (“love”).

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Examples

  • Others again understand it of preposterous venery, which is absurd: every ancient law-giver framed his code to increase the true wealth of the people — population — and severely punished all processes, like onanism, which impeded it.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • The venery was a little further off, drawing toward the park.

    The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I Various 1885

  • Others again understand it of preposterous venery, which is absurd: every ancient law-giver framed his code to increase the true wealth of the people -- population -- and severely punished all processes, like onanism, which impeded it.

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

  • Both writers confuse excision of the nymphæ with circumcision of the clitoris (Zambúr) Al-Siyúti (Kitab al-Izá 'fi'Ilm al-Nikah) has a very interesting chapter on Sapphic venery, which is well known to Europe as proved by such works as "Gamiani," and "Anandria ou Confessions de Mademoiselle Sappho, avec la Clef,"

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

  • How birds are affected in this kind, appears out of Aristotle, he will have them to sing ob futuram venerem for joy or in hope of their venery which is to come.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • Both writers confuse excision of the nymphæ with circumcision of the clitoris (Zambúr) Al – Siyúti (Kitab al-Izá’ fi’Ilm al-Nikah) has a very interesting chapter on Sapphic venery, which is well known to Europe as proved by such works as

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • While the Kennedy's -- Dad, John, Teddy and Bobby -- may seem like exemplars of the sex gambols, there were others, many, many others, equally blatant, but much more discreet, who used their powerful positions to exercise the venery.

    Warren Adler: Chick Lit is Dead, Lover Lit is In Warren Adler 2012

  • While the Kennedy's -- Dad, John, Teddy and Bobby -- may seem like exemplars of the sex gambols, there were others, many, many others, equally blatant, but much more discreet, who used their powerful positions to exercise the venery.

    Warren Adler: Chick Lit is Dead, Lover Lit is In Warren Adler 2012

  • I suggested to the most senior editor on gay topics that I should go undercover to "gay baths" and "backrooms" (as such places were called) to chronicle the somber scenes of venery daily enacted therein.

    Defending Arizona's Education Law 2010

  • I suggested to the most senior editor on gay topics that I should go undercover to "gay baths" and "backrooms" (as such places were called) to chronicle the somber scenes of venery daily enacted therein.

    Defending Arizona's Education Law 2010

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  • "And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for to rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches environing in divers lands and sometimes venery."

    Joyce, Ulysses, 14

    January 20, 2007

  • "Girls of a more 'primitive' age have sung the praises of their 'deep fringed purse' and mocked the man who tried to plumb them. They could boast of the fury of their venery and the comfort of their lust but the permissive women of our pill-safe age can only allow the Hell's Angels to prove their valour by not vomiting when they suck menstrual blood from them, or wank the boys who walk them to the bus stop, or let them have a fuck without too much palaver."

    - 'The Politics Of Female Sexuality', Germaine Greer in Oz, 1970.

    March 28, 2008

  • "Out of the ten octaves that make up the human instrument, I can compass perhaps two. Thus, while I may have a certain amount of intelligence, I have no aesthetic sense; while I possess the mathematical faculty, I am wholly without the religious emotions; while I am naturally addicted to venery, I have little ambition and am not at all avaricious."

    - Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

    March 29, 2008