Good words for bad things

This past week started with pulchritude, moved into pleasure, and today will get into some words for more base desires.But before we do, let’s put all these pleasures into perspective.

Pulchritude is physical beauty (like my wife has). A voluptuarian is devoted to luxurious and sensual living, and is not necessarily a negative term. A Sybarite enjoys luxurious and self-indulgent living, and has negative connotations. A hedonist just does whatever feels good, and has the most negative meaning of any of the words of this past week. Epicureans have a philosophical perspective on the different qualities of pleasure. Epicures enjoy good food, and while the term is not meant to have a sense of snobbiness those who consider themselves to be epicures probably eat and drink alongside snobs. They would maintain that they don’t care what’s “considered” good by those with class and standing, only what “is” good, whether “in” or not.

The next three words descend a little further into the hedonistic area.

Salacious is an adjective that comes from the Latin word salax, which is a form of the word salire, which means to leap. It likely comes from the animal act of procreation, when a male animal will leap to engage the female in sexual intercourse. It has been used in English since 1661, being adapted from the 1605 form of the word salacity. Salacity has fallen into disuse, but the same root word has given us the word salient, which should have been part of the blog of 2/15 but wasn’t; stay tuned. Regardless of the way in which it came to mean what it does, it means lecherous or pornographic, erotically stimulating. But where lecherous is directed usually at one individual, salacious is a more general term.

Concupiscence comes from the Latin word cupiscere, which means to wish or desire. Adding the con- to the front intensifies the meaning. It passed through Low Latin and Old French and Middle English to now mean a strong or abnormal desire or appetite, particularly sexual in nature. The few uses of this word which I have encountered use concupiscence almost as a clinical term, but that could just be because the books I read are not magazines with centerfolds (which probably wouldn’t use the word anyway.) The key word in the definition of concupiscence is abnormal.

Callipygian is a word I stumbled across, and don’t remember where; it comes from two Greek words: kallos means beauty and pyge refers to the buttocks. Yes, there actually is a word for beautiful butt. It has no negative connotation, but its use in other than a plastic surgeon’s office could have negative consequences.

We all have desires (well, most of us do – I’m not naming names), but it is when the desires becomes excessive (particularly in the sexual arena) that it becomes concupiscence. Salacious adds a negative sense to normal sexual desire. And, for the record, I’m a “leg” man, not a callipygian; I haven’t found the word for that yet.