What is "licentious"

Usage examples of "licentious".

Clovis must curb a licentious spirit, which would aggravate the misery of the vanquished, whilst it corrupted the union and discipline of the conquerors.

Emilie and Armelline were great friends, but their prejudices on the subject of sensual enjoyment were so strong that I could never get them to listen to licentious talk, to allow certain small liberties which I would gladly have taken, or to afford me those pleasures of the eyes that we accept in default of better things.

She took off her clothes in a moment with the greatest coolness, and did not indulge my licentious gaze in the least.

The club is at once decent and licentious, the papers are to be read there, games of all kinds are played, food and drink may be had, and even love is available, for ladies frequent the club.

They proved their sympathy with the feelings of the bard, not by licentious shouts and wild huzzas, but by the composure of their spirits, the serenity of their countenances, and the deep and unutterable silence which universally prevailed.

Of his moral virtues, chastity is not the most conspicuous: but the public happiness could not be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, whom the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion.

He even launched into an ethnographic digression: the German was vapourish, the French woman licentious, the Italian passionate.

The fatal moment was perhaps approaching, when some licentious youth, or some jealous tyrant, would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power, which they had exerted for the benefit of their people.

A behavior so very opposite to that of his amiable predecessor afforded no favorable presage of the new reign: and the Romans, deprived of power and freedom, asserted their privilege of licentious murmurs.

The people of Great Britain, naturally fierce, impatient, and clamorous, have been too much indulged, upon every petty miscarriage, with trials, courts-martial, and dismissions, which tend only to render their military commanders rash and precipitate, the populace more licentious and intractable, and to disgrace the national character in the opinion of mankind.

The use of a peculiar cant phraseology for different classes, it would appear, originated with the Argoliers, a species of French beggars or monkish impostors, who were notorious for every thing that was bad and infamous: these people assumed the form of a regular government, elected a king, established a fixed code of laws, and invented a language peculiar to themselves, constructed probably by some of the debauched and licentious youths, who, abandoning their scholastic studies, associated with these vagabonds.

But this form was degraded by the facility with which it was exposed to the public eye, and prostituted to licentious desire.

So actually on Shrove Tuesday a considerable number of boys were collected in front of the cathedral, and there divided into bands, which traversed the whole town, making a house-to-house visitation, claiming all profane books, licentious paintings, lutes, harps, cards and dice, cosmetics and perfumes--in a word, all the hundreds of products of a corrupt society and civilisation, by the aid of which Satan at times makes victorious war on God.

When the great emergencies of the state required his presence and attention, he was engaged in conversation with the philosopher Plotinus, wasting his time in trifling or licentious pleasures, preparing his initiation to the Grecian mysteries, or soliciting a place in the Arcopagus of Athens.

Orkborne, a door she had just passed was flung open, and she saw young Halder, whose licentious insolence had so much alarmed her in the bathing-house, stroam out, yawning, stretching, and swearing unmeaningly, but most disgustingly, at every step.