Word of the Day for Sunday June 26, 2005

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," [1]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," [2]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," [3]TriQuarterly, March 22, 1993


Amative comes from Medieval Latin amativus, "capable of love,"
from the past participle of Latin amare, "to love."