In the Soliloquy lexicon
salacious
Treating sexual matters in an overly interested, lustful, or indecent way.
Used in a sentence
The newspaper avoided salacious details about the actor’s private life.
Where it comes from
From Latin salax ‘lustful’, literally ‘fond of leaping’, from salire ‘to leap’.
Its journey
Salacious entered English in the seventeenth century from Latin salax, meaning ‘lustful’ or ‘lecherous’. That Latin word was built on salire, ‘to leap’: desire was imagined as something that made one spring or bound. In English, the learned borrowing settled into its modern sense of an indecently eager interest in sexual matters.
A small story
At the village fête, Mrs Vale lowered her binoculars whenever the vicar passed, then raised them towards the dancers by the beer tent. Her smile sharpened at every loosened ribbon and careless embrace. By dusk, even the gossip seemed salacious, fluttering from stall to stall like torn bunting.
Nearby words
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