Word Of The Day

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," 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," 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," TriQuarterly, March 22, 1993

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