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lust

 
Dictionary: lust   (lŭst) pronunciation
 
n.
  1. Intense or unrestrained sexual craving.
    1. An overwhelming desire or craving: a lust for power.
    2. Intense eagerness or enthusiasm: a lust for life.
  2. Obsolete. Pleasure; relish.
intr.v., lust·ed, lust·ing, lusts.

To have an intense or obsessive desire, especially one that is sexual.

[Middle English, from Old English, desire.]


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Leaking Underground Storage Tank.

 
Thesaurus: lust
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noun

  1. Sexual hunger: amativeness, concupiscence, desire, eroticism, erotism, itch, libidinousness, lustfulness, passion, prurience, pruriency. See desire, sex/asexual.
  2. A strong wanting of what promises enjoyment or pleasure: appetence, appetency, appetite, craving, desire, hunger, itch, longing, thirst, wish, yearning, yen. See desire.

verb

    To have a greedy, obsessive desire: crave, hunger, itch, thirst. See desire.

 
Antonyms: lust
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n

Definition: appetite, passion
Antonyms: aversion, chastity, disenchantment, disgust

v

Definition: desire strongly
Antonyms: be chaste, be pure, dislike


 

One of the traditional seven deadly sins, and the particular enemy of many of the early Christian fathers, including saints Jerome, Anthony and Augustine. Unfortunately the term is apt to stray in meaning, sometimes covering sexual desire in general, but sometimes confined to sexual desire in which the other person is merely used, or seen as a mere object. In Spanish and Italian the sin is called ‘lusuria’, which has different connotations again. See love, sex.

 
Quotes About: Lust
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Quotes:

"People will insist on treating the mons Veneris as though it were Mount Everest. Too silly!" - Aldous Huxley

"This is the monstrosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is boundless, and the act a slave to limit." - William Shakespeare

"I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times." - Jimmy Carter

"Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust." - Marquis De Sade

"What most men desire is a virgin who is a whore." - Edward Dahlberg

"Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes." - Marquis De Sade

See more famous quotes about Lust

 
Wikipedia: Lust
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Lechery as depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Lust (or lechery) is an inordinate craving for sexual intercourse often to the point of assuming a self-indulgent, and sometimes violent character. Lust, or an immoderate desire for the flesh of another (outside of matrimony), is considered a sin, or impure act, in the three major Abrahamic religions.

Contents

In religion

Judaism

In Judaism, all evil inclinations and lusts of the flesh are characterised by yetzer hara (Hebrew, יצר הרע). Yetzer hara is not a demonic force, but rather man's mis-use of the things which the physical body needs to survive, and is often contrasted with yetzer hatov. This idea was derived from Genesis 8:21, which states that "the imagination of the heart of man is evil from his youth".

Yetzer hara is often identified with Satan and the angel of death, and there is sometimes a tendency to give a personality and separate activity to the Yetzer. For the Yetzer, like Satan, misleads man in this world, and testifies against him in the world to come. However, Yetzer is clearly distinguished from Satan, and on other occasions is made exactly parallel to sin. The Torah is considered the great antidote against this force. Though, like all things which God has made, the Yetzer is good. For without it, man would never marry, beget a child, build a house, or trade.

A demon satiating his lust in a 13th century manuscript.

Christianity

In the New Testament, the word "lust" is commonly used as a translation of the Koiné Greek word, 'επιθυμία'. According to the definition of the Catholic Encyclopedia, a Christian's heart is lustful when "venereal satisfaction is sought for either outside wedlock or, at any rate, in a manner which is contrary to the laws that govern marital intercourse".

In Roman Catholicism, lust became one of the Seven Deadly Sins, taking the place of extravagance (latin: luxuria). This change occurred because in the Romance languages, the cognates of luxuria (the latin name of the sin) evolved to have an exclusively sexual meaning; the Old French cognate was adopted into English as luxury, but this lost its sexual meaning by the 14th century[1].

Lust is now considered by Roman Catholicism to be a capital sin; the reason for this is due to the Catholic belief that the gravity of an offence is measured by the harm it works to the individual or to the community. And insofar as impurity bears the evil distinction that, whenever there is a direct conscious surrender to any of its phases, the guilt incurred by the individual is always grievous. However, when there is some impure gratification for which a person is not immediately responsible, but simply had posited its cause and had not deliberately consented, the sin is only considered venial.

The determination of the amount of flagitiousness depends upon the proximate danger of giving way on the part of the agent, as well as upon the known capacity of the things done to bring about venereal pleasure. This sin applies to external and internal sins alike, forasmuch as Jesus had uttered the word 'lust' during his Sermon on the Mount thus :

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matthew 5:27 - 28)

Islam

In Islam, lascivious glances and thoughts are wrong. As the Prophet Mohammed once said, "The fornication of the eyes is to look with lust; the fornication of the tongue is to speak lustful things; the fornication of the hands is to touch with lust; the fornication of the feet is to walk towards lust; the fornication of the heart is to desire evil."

Paganism

Few ancient, pagan religions have actually considered lust to be a vice. The most famous example of a wide-spread religious movement practicing lust as a ritual would be the Bacchanalias of the Ancient Roman Bacchantes. However, this activity was soon outlawed by the Roman Senate in 186 BC in the decree Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus. The practice of sacred prostitution, however, continued to be an activity practiced often by the Dionysians.

In art

Goya's Mujeres riendo (Two Women Laughing).

Literature

From Ovid to the works of les poètes maudits, characters have always been faced with scenes of lechery, and long since has lust been a common motif in world literature. Many writers, such as Georges Bataille, Casanova and Prosper Mérimée, have written works wherein scenes at bordellos and other unseemly locales take place.

Despite the apparent evils of Baudelaire, author of Les fleurs du mal, he had once remarked, in regard to the artist, that "The more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes... Only the brute is good at coupling, and copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another -- and the artist never emerges from himself".

The most notable work to touch upon the sin of lust, and all of the Seven Deadly Sins, is Dante's la Divina Commedia. Dante's criterion for lust was an "excessive love of others," insofar as an excessive love for man would render one's love of God secondary.

In the first canticle of Dante's Inferno, the lustful are punished by being continuously swept around in a whirlwind, which symbolizes their passions. Penitents who are guilty of lust, like the two famous lovers, Paolo and Francesca, cannot cleanse their soul of this sin and will never purge their minds from their lustful desire. In Purgatorio, of the selfsame work, the penitents are forced to walk through flames in order to purge themselves of their lustful inclinations.

In philosophy

The link between love and lust has always been a problematic question in philosophy.

Schopenhauer notes the misery which results from sexual relationships. According to him, this directly explains the sentiments of shame and sadness which tend to follow the act of sexual intercourse. For, he states, the only power that reigns is the inextinguishable desire to face, at any price, the blind love present in human existence without any consideration of the outcome. He estimates that a genius of his species is an industrial being who wants only to produce, and wants only to think. The theme of lust for Schopenhauer is thus to consider the horrors which will almost certainly follow the culmination of lust.

In psychology

Lust, in the domain of psychology, is often treated as a case of "heightened libido".

See also

Further reading

References

External links


 
Translations: Lust
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - lyst, begær, liderlighed
v. intr. - begære, tørste efter

idioms:

  • lust after    begære, tørste efter
  • lust for    begær efter, -begær

Nederlands (Dutch)
lust, wellust, wellustigheid

Français (French)
n. - (gén) désir, luxure, (fig) soif du (pouvoir)
v. intr. - convoiter (qn, qch)

idioms:

  • lust after    convoiter (qn, qch)
  • lust for    convoiter (qn, qch)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Sinneslust, sinnliche Begierde, Gier
v. - Lust haben

idioms:

  • lust after    gelüsten nach
  • lust for    gelüsten nach

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - λαγνεία, έντονη σαρκική επιθυμία, άνομος πόθος, (μτφ.) ακόρεστη "δίψα"
v. - ποθώ, ορέγομαι, λιμπίζομαι, εποφθαλμιώ, επιθυμώ σεξουαλικά

idioms:

  • lust after    επιθυμώ σεξουαλικά
  • lust for    ορέγομαι, ποθώ

Italiano (Italian)
lussuria

idioms:

  • lust after/for    concupire

Português (Portuguese)
n. - luxúria (f), desejo (m) ardente
v. - desejar ardentemente

idioms:

  • lust after/for    ânsia (f) por

Русский (Russian)
испытывать вожделение, сильно желать, вожделение, страсть

idioms:

  • lust after/for    жажда чего-л.

Español (Spanish)
n. - deseo vehemente, anhelo, apetito, lascivia, lujuria, sensualidad
v. intr. - codiciar, anhelar, desear con lujuria

idioms:

  • lust after    codiciar, desear
  • lust for    codiciar, desear

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - lusta, kättja, åtrå, begär
v. - eftertrakta, längta efter, törsta efter, (bibl.) begära

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
贪欲, 色欲, 欲望, 贪求, 渴望

idioms:

  • lust after    渴望, 贪求
  • lust for    渴望, 贪求

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 貪欲, 色欲, 欲望
v. intr. - 貪求, 渴望

idioms:

  • lust after    渴望, 貪求
  • lust for    渴望, 貪求

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 성욕, 열망, 갈망, 기쁨
v. intr. - 욕정이 타오르다, 열망하다

idioms:

  • lust after    열망이 치솟다
  • lust for    열망이 치솟다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 強い欲望, 渇望, 色情, 肉欲, 性欲, 情欲
v. - 熱望する, 色情を催す

idioms:

  • lust after/for    渇望する

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) رغبه, رغبه جنسيه قويه أو شبقه, توق شديد أو شهوة, تلهف, تحرق (فعل) يتحرق إلى, يرغب في الجماع‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮תאווה, חשק, תשוקה‬
v. intr. - ‮השתוקק‬


 
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