Word of the Day
Thursday February 14, 2008
amative \AM-uh-tiv\, adjective:
Pertaining to or disposed to love, especially sexual love; full of love; amorous.
Theoretically, any given left-kisser should meet more right-kissers and, over an amative lifetime, or even good year in junior high, be subtly pressured to shift to the right in order to land a wet one -- or just avoid a broken nose. No?
-- Donald G. McNeil Jr., "Pucker Up, Sweetie, and Tilt Right", New York Times, February 13, 2003
In the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of another nap even more often than it does to amative imaginings, Tennyson to the contrary notwithstanding.
-- "Touch of Spring Fever Makes Whole World Kin", Science News, May 23, 1931
Well, poetry has been erotic, or amative, or something of that sort -- at least a vast deal of it has -- ever since it stopped being epic.
-- Helen Deutsch, "Death, desire and translation: on the poetry of Propertius", TriQuarterly, March 22, 1993
Amative comes from Medieval Latin amativus, "capable of love," from the past participle of Latin amare, "to love."
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