Adjective

As Flies to wanton Boyes are we to th' Gods, / They kill us for their sport.

if wenches will hang out lures for fellows, it is no matter what they suffer: I detest such creatures; and it would be much better for them that their faces had been seamed with the smallpox: but I must confess I never saw any of this wanton behaviour in poor Jenny [...].

I know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that valentine—forgive me, sir—it was a wanton thing which no woman with any self-respect should have done.

People should not marry too young, because, if they do, the children will be weak and female, the wives will become wanton , and the husbands stunted in their growth.

The grave simplicity of the philosopher was ill calculated to engage her wanton levity, of to fix that unbounded passion for variety, which often discovered personal merit in the meanest of mankind.

the market price will rise more or less above the natural price, according as either the greatness of the deficiency, or the wealth and wanton luxury of the competitors, happen to animate more or less the eagerness of the competition.

Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness of wanton ill-nature.

these developments in Gaza are a consequence of the state of siege that the tiny territory has been under – a society that has been fenced-in, starved, and seen its very fabric torn apart by unemployment and wanton military destruction.

But do not think it argues change of temper since I wrote the Frère review, or a wanton praise of one man and blame of another.

Adjective

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.

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.

It must be removed at once, lest it disturb the young and arouse in adults the most prurient thoughts.

nor is it more prurient or lascivious than many productions to be found in a circulating library.

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.

But in contemporary consumerist societies, when the kids are safely in bed, television programs allow viewers to indulge their more prurient interests.