Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Giving, characterized by, or suggesting ample, unrestrained pleasure to the senses: voluptuous sculptural forms; a voluptuous ripe fruit; a full, voluptuous figure.
- adj. Devoted to or indulging in sensual pleasures.
- adj. Directed toward or anticipating sensual pleasure: voluptuous thoughts.
- adj. Arising from or contributing to the satisfaction of sensuous or sensual desires. See Synonyms at sensuous.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pertaining to, proceeding from, or inclined to sensual gratification: as, voluptuous tastes or habits.
- Passed or spent in luxury or sensuality.
- Contributing to sensual pleasure; exciting, or tending to excite, sensual desires and indulgence; sensual.
- Given to the enjoyments of luxury and pleasure; indulging in sensual gratifications.
- Synonyms Carnal, Sensuous, etc. See sensual.
Wiktionary
- adj. Suggestive of or characterized by full, generous, pleasurable sensation.
- adj. of a woman Curvaceous, sexy, full-figured.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Full of delight or pleasure, especially that of the senses; ministering to sensuous or sensual gratification; exciting sensual desires; luxurious; sensual.
- adj. Given to the enjoyments of luxury and pleasure; indulging to excess in sensual gratifications.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. displaying luxury and furnishing gratification to the senses
- adj. (of a woman's body) having a large bosom and pleasing curves
- adj. having strong sexual appeal
Etymologies
- From Latin voluptuosus ("delightful"), from voluptās ("pleasure, delight"), from volup ("with pleasure"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French voluptueux, from Latin voluptuōsus, full of pleasure, from voluptās, pleasure; see wel-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Or perhaps the weather decides to cloud over for several days straight and without so much sun the zucchinis and tomatoes, for the briefest moment, have decided to stop falling of the vine in voluptuous ripeness.”
“Officer Robeson inquired, not sure if the woman was referring to the voluptuous breasts bulging from a shirt that strained to hold them in place, or the two young girls in the car, who were now silent and pretending not to be paying attention to their mother.”
“Moreover, there are millions of people who think voluptuous is breathtaking and beautiful.”
Lacey Schwimmer Flu; Anna Trebunskaya Dances With Mark Dacascos
“I wasn’t “thick,” as they called voluptuous girls, I was invisible.”
“He has a fear of flying and is known to travel with a Ukranian nurse described as a "voluptuous blonde" who "knows his routine.”
The Washington Post: Moammar Gaddafi clings to power in Libya, protests continue
“A 2009 U.S. Embassy cable published by WikiLeaks cited Gadhafi's reliance on a Ukrainian nurse, described as a "voluptuous blonde," and his dislike of staying on upper floors of buildings, aversion to flying over water, and taste for horse racing and flamenco dancing.”
The Wall Street Journal: Eccentric and Brutal, He Met End as a Fugitive
“It also discussed Gadhafi's longtime reliance on a Ukrainian nurse named Galyna who the cable said had been described as a "voluptuous blonde.”
“But when we used the word voluptuous in a conversation he had to stop and ask - What does that mean?”
“(2Ki 16: 9), little advantage resulted from it, for Tilgath-pilneser spent the winter in voluptuous revelry at Damascus; and the connection formed with the Assyrian king was eventually a source of new and greater calamities and humiliation to the kingdom of Judah (2Ch 28: 2,”
“When Lucy Westenra, Dracula's doomed victim, is under the Count's thrall, she is consistently described as voluptuous, whereas when she is herself her behavior is chaste and demure, to the point that, at the brink of death, her fiancé will only kiss her on the forehead.”
11 Things You Might Not Have Known About Bram Stoker's Dracula
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘voluptuous’.
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Very Silly Words
A list of very silly sounding words, as well as words that are fun to say
badot, gardyloo, dingbat, gaffer, kine, haberdashery, forsooth, whey-faced, hoddypeak, brouhaha, widdershins, decemnovenarianize and 115 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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henryar's list
marmoleum, menagerie, cyan, ochre, pilfer, discombobulate, loquacious, iridescent, amethyst, derelict, botulism, equilibrium and 240 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Rococo
Words that describe the decadent Rococo art of the early 18th Century
Baroque, hedonistic, sensuality, pretty, elaborate, flirtation, chauvinistic, cupid, decorative, playful, vibrant, exuberant and 31 more...
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upt
abrupt, corrupt, disrupt, erupt, re-upped, bankrupt, rupture, voluptuous, nuptials, uptake, uptick, uptown and 15 more...
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ravyn's randy words
Words that are as fun to say as do!
amorous, impassioned, infatuated, enamored, desirous, vehement, ecstasy, frenzy, sentiment, relations, coition, audacious and 16 more...
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very good words must use in writing
ambivalent, allegory, spartan, callousness, clandestine, voluptuous, monologue, furtive, repudiate, fanatic, anodyne, reconnoitering and 4 more...
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z. aural ophelemity
words that sound so good, it's almost dirty
voluptuous, sensuous, voracious, ransom, sinister, notorious, wretched, insurrection, limbic, inverness, luscious, torrid and 3 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Food words that sound sexy
I am taking my lead from the 100 mile diet bloggers in Vancouver, whose guidelines for eating locally conclude with the observation that most things said about food are equally applicable to sex: t...
unctuous, voluptuous, sensuous, salty, lick, comforting, yummy, goddess, scrape, peeled, conch, rise and 12 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
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Faves
nepenthe, cupidity, anodyne, obdurate, doleful, obsolescent, quale, piquant, velleity, inchoate, disport, facile and 366 more...
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Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
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old faves
ones I already liked
vacuole, organelle, debauchle, voluptuous, spry, cattywampus, obscure, occlude, occult, celtic, voracious, ardently and 133 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for voluptuous.
millos mhmm...luscious May 11, 2012
knitandpurl "Alas, remembering my own agitation whenever I had caught sight of a girl who attracted me, sometimes when I had merely heard her spoken of without having seen her, my anxiety to look my best, to show myself to advantage, my cold sweats, I had only, to torture myself, to imagine the same voluptuous excitement in Albertine, as though by means of the apparatus which, after the visit of a certain practitioner who had shown some scepticism about her malady, my aunt Léonie had wished to see invented, and which would enable the doctor to undergo all the sufferings of his patient in order to understand better."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 734 of the Modern Library paperback edition Feb 17, 2010
knitandpurl "And no doubt they ought to have forgone the voluptuous pleasure of that sacrilege, but it did not express the whole of their natures."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 348 of the Modern Library paperback edition Jan 20, 2010
knitandpurl "However much she tried to conceal her awareness of it, it bathed her, enveloped her, vaporous, voluptuous, made her whole face glow."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 193 of the Modern Library paperback edition Jan 8, 2010
knitandpurl "I remembered the distress that I felt when I saw her face subjected to an active scrutiny, like that of a painter preparing to make a sketch, entirely enveloped in it, and, doubtless on account of my presence, submitting to this contact without appearing to notice it, with a passivity that was perhaps clandestinely voluptuous."
--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 192 of the Modern Library paperback edition Jan 8, 2010
knitandpurl "This effort on the part of the old feeling to combine and form a single element with the other, more recent, which had for its voluptuous object only the coloured surface, the flesh-pink bloom of a flower of the sea-shore, was one that often results simply in creating (in the chemical sense) a new body, which may last only a few moments."
--Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, pp 179-180 of the Modern Library paperback edition Feb 13, 2009
travismcdermott c1374 CHAUCER Troylus IV. 1573 Love ne drof yow nought to don this dede, But lust voluptuous, and cowarde drede. Jul 3, 2008
sonofgroucho People who add an 'm' should be neutered, or at least told off in a stern and serious way. Nov 11, 2007
wordup Why do some people add an m to this word? It drives me crazy when people say 'volumptuous'. It takes away the sexiness of the word and makes me think of cellulite. hehe Nov 11, 2007
skipvia Yeah, but...you know...voluptuous! Oct 23, 2007
chained_bear I don't know, the "hard dents of two sharp teeth" kind of gives it away... ;) Oct 23, 2007
skipvia I was still stuck on voluptuous, I guess... Oct 23, 2007
chained_bear Uhh... that's kind of the whole point, the death part... hence... Dracula? Remember? Oct 23, 2007
skipvia Well, as long as there's sex, I can do without the death part. Oct 23, 2007
chained_bear Sex and death, baby. That's what it was all about. Oct 23, 2007
seanahan Seriously, I didn't realize Dracula was so erotic. Oct 23, 2007
chained_bear OOH! OOH! WORDIE PORN!! Oct 23, 2007
jaymediane
The fair girl went on her knees and bent over me, fairly gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal... I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the supersensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there."
--Bram Stoker, (ch. 3, pg. 42) Oct 22, 2007