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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
arousal
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
emotional
▪ The person will have a high level of emotional arousal and be particularly sensitive to social influences which can affect arousal.
▪ Work from sev-eral laboratories has suggested that emotional arousal plays a critical role in memory.
▪ These findings add considerable weight to the claims that emotional arousal is of causal significance to relapse.
▪ Moreover, visual input produces direct emotional arousal, which is the most potent neurochemical condition for learning and attitudinal change.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Feeling his swift arousal, she dragged her mouth from his to bury it against his warm neck.
▪ He wasn't unmoved either, and his slow arousal against her made her arch into him.
▪ The creative advertiser has the function of stimulating arousal in buyers.
▪ These findings add considerable weight to the claims that emotional arousal is of causal significance to relapse.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Arousal

Arousal \A*rous"al\, n. The act of arousing, or the state of being aroused.

Whatever has associated itself with the arousal and activity of our better nature.
--Hare.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
arousal

1827, "action of arousing, a being awakened" from arouse + -al (2). Sexual association is from c.1900.

Wiktionary
arousal

n. 1 The act of arousing or the state of being aroused. 2 Sexual arousal. 3 A physiological and psychological state of being awake or reactive to stimuli, including elevated heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of sensory alertness, mobility and readiness to respond. 4 Arousal from sleep or hibernation.

WordNet
arousal
  1. n. the act of arousing; "the purpose of art is the arousal of emotions" [syn: rousing]

  2. a state of heightened physiological activity

  3. awakening from sleep

  4. mutual sexual stimulation prior to sexual intercourse [syn: foreplay, stimulation]

Wikipedia
Arousal

Arousal is the physiological and psychological state of being awake. It involves activation of the reticular activating system in the brainstem, the autonomic nervous system, and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of sensory alertness, mobility, and readiness to respond.

The arousal system involves many different neural systems. Five major systems originating in the brainstem, with connections extending throughout the cortex, are based on the brain's neurotransmitters: acetylcholine, norepinephrine, dopamine, histamine, and serotonin. When these systems are in action, the receiving neural areas become sensitive and responsive to incoming signals, producing alertness and cortical activity.

Arousal is important in regulating consciousness, attention, and information processing. It is a crucial for motivating certain behaviours, such as mobility, the pursuit of nutrition, the fight-or-flight response and sexual activity (the arousal phase of Masters and Johnson's human sexual response cycle). It is also important in emotion and has been included in theories such as the James-Lange theory of emotion. According to Hans Eysenck, differences in baseline arousal level lead people to be extraverts or introverts.

The Yerkes-Dodson law states that an optimal level of arousal for performance exists, and too little or too much arousal can adversely affect task performance. One interpretation of the Yerkes-Dodson Law is the Easterbrook cue-utilisation hypothesis. Easterbrook states that an increase of arousal decreases the number of cues that can be used.

Usage examples of "arousal".

After eight long years of pain and fear, she now knew why her body turned traitor on her, beginning with an overwhelming arousal and ending with a bleak, almost agonizing pain before slowly diminishing.

His arousal was a potent force, electrifying and primal as she instinctively reached for him.

The good old hot blast of arousal was coming out of every pore of her.

She could hear her cunt sucking him back in on every upstroke, could smell the scent of their combined arousal as he impaled her with his long, thick, black cock.

Slowly up, down, up, down his tanned body, from neck to ankles and back again, until Lyssa could see him grit his teeth in a grimace of arousal that could not be assuaged.

As his levels of arousal build to a peak, he will experience the first of a series of pleasurable orgasmic contractions.

With titillating touches he provoked an insistent, anxious arousal in her body.

I began to appreciate the sheer sexual power that had taken possession of me, and with that appreciation came the full arousal that had been denied me.

Michel at first, but then he remembered that the cortex inhibits the lower centers of the brain, so that low cortical arousal allows the more uninhibited behavior of the extravert, while high cortical arousal is inhibitory and leads to introversion.

I timed the period to arousal once or twice more, then let Malva put her under a little more deeply.

And so, almost in tandem with Rebecca she began to masturbate, her labia slick with juices of her arousal and her mouth falling open to draw in huge breaths as her orgasm approached.

It is hoped to construct a rectal modulus of Reagan and the auto-disaster of maximized audience arousal.

After the battle he would be in a state of high sexual arousal, flooded by the lifeforce, and then he would force himself on whatever woman was available to him-white trash, Indian, or nigra, it made no difference to him.

She could hear the sound of her pussy suctioning him back in with every outstroke, could smell the scent of her own arousal.

Part pixie, part temptress, her pouty little mouth curved with enticing humor, the way her eyes sparkled with warmth and the remnants of arousal.