Debauch vs Prurient - What's the difference?
debauch | prurient |
An individual act of debauchery.
*1902 , Thomas Ebenezer Webb, The Mystery of William Shakespeare: A Summary of Evidence , page 242:
* 1913 , , The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu , ch. 25:
An orgy.
* 1955 , , Catch-22 , ch. 13:
To morally corrupt (someone); to seduce.
* 1727 , , The History of the Devil , ch. 9:
To debase (something); to lower the value of (something).
* 2014 March 23, , "
Uneasy with desire; itching; especially, having a lascivious anxiety or propensity; lustful.
* 1823 , The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, Etc ,
* 1995 , Brian Parkinson, Ideas and Realities of Emotion ,
* 2010 , Stephen Sartarelli (translator), Love and the Erotic in Art'', (2008, Stefano Zuffi, ''Amore ed erotismo ), John Paul Getty Trust, US,
Arousing or appealing to sexual desire.
* 1825 , The Literary Chronicle for the Year 1825 , London,
* 2005 , Donald Gilbert-SantamarÃa, Writers on the Market: Consuming Literature in Early Seventeenth-century Spain ,
* 2008 , Marcel Danesi, Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives ,
Curious, especially inappropriately so.
As a noun debauch
is an individual act of debauchery.As a verb debauch
is to morally corrupt (someone); to seduce.As an adjective prurient is
uneasy with desire; itching; especially, having a lascivious anxiety or propensity; lustful.debauch
English
Noun
(es)- Greene died of a debauch ; and Marlowe, the gracer of tragedians, perished in an ignominious brawl.
- [T]he room probably was one which he actually used for opium debauches .
- [T]here were always the gay and silly sensual young girls that Yossarian had found and brought there and those that the sleepy enlisted men returning to Pianosa after their own exhausting seven-day debauch had brought there.
Verb
(es)- But the Devil had met with too much Success in his first Attempts, not to go on with his general Resolution of debauching the Minds of Men, and bringing them off from God.
Peter Hitchens's Blog: 23 March 2014 1:41 AM," The Mail on Sunday (UK) (retrieved 18 April 2014):
- [S]aving of all kinds is pointless when interest is microscopic and state-sponsored inflation is debauching the currency.
Derived terms
* debauchee * debaucher * debauchery * debauchmentReferences
prurient
English
Adjective
(en adjective)page 781,
- We know that at that period certain indecencies in the dresses, even of those who were considered as the most refined and polished men of the age, were not only tolerated but ostentatiously displayed, and every sort of device that the most prurient mind could think of was had recourse to, to attract attention or excite a smile.
page 124,
- For example, some of the more prudish senders may have averted their attention from the sexual pictures while other more prurient viewers may have intensified their gaze.
page 7,
- It must be removed at once, lest it disturb the young and arouse in adults the most prurient thoughts.
page 156,
- nor is it more prurient or lascivious than many productions to be found in a circulating library.
page 130,
- Much of my discussion in the previous two chapters has focused on the dichotomy in Alemán's novel between the author's stated interest in moral didacticism and the more prurient appeal of the novel's representations of material privation and violent spectacle.
page 204,
- But in contemporary consumerist societies, when the kids are safely in bed, television programs allow viewers to indulge their more prurient interests.
