LICENTIOUS

[Dr. Goodword]

• licentious •

Pronunciation: lai-sen-chês • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Totally dissolute, extremely immoral, morally degenerate, lascivious, lewd, sexually indulgent.

Notes: Today's Good Word is an adjective derived from license (British spelling licence). We normally would not think of licentiousness when applying for a hunting, fishing, or driver's license, yet today's word comes from the same license, as the Word History will show. The adverb is licentiously.

In Play: We usually associate today's word with sexual promiscuity, but we should remember that any kind of extreme moral degeneracy qualifies for this term: "Izzy Badenoff was finally arrested for his licentious financial dealings that left his family, the city, and most of the banks in town bankrupt." Throughout history certain places have acquired a reputation for licentiousness; Sodom and Gomorrah were only the beginning: "Phil Anders spent the past ten years in licentious living—gambling, drinking, and chasing women in Las Vegas."

Word History: This word came to English, as usual, via French from Latin licentiosus "taking (too) much license, unrestrained". The Latin word was derived from licentia "freedom, liberty, license". The current meaning of this word arose from the implication of being allowed too much freedom, regardless of the law. A regular license, of course, allows the legal freedom to carry out a specific activity, such as hunting or driving. The noun came from the verb licere "to be allowed, be lawful," whose root we see in the English borrowings licit and illicit. We find the remains of the Proto-Indo-European base *leik- "to offer, bargain" only in the two remaining Baltic languages, Latvian, where likt means "put", and Lithuanian, where atlikti, with the prefix pa-, means "carry out, fulfill".

[MTC]

American actor Charlie Sheen will soon be required to wear a scarlet "L" for licentiousness. He has been pilloried and pelted with tomatoes by the tabloids.

Beware lest ye cast the first tomato, however. The list of pious hypocrites involved in sex scandals among the politicians and preachers is long and amusing.

By the way, "hypocrite" is a good word, if that isn't an oxymoron.

[Slava]

Whenever I come across this word, which isn't all that often, I'm reminded of my favorite mathematician, who wrote, among other things, these lines:

Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers,
Lurid, licentious, and vile,
--Make me smile.

[MTC]

Humor my curosity; who is the mathematician? Except for brilliant anomalies like Lewis Carroll, mathematicians aren't particularly noted for the written word.

[Slava]

Humor my curosity; who is the mathematician? Except for brilliant anomalies like Lewis Carroll, mathematicians aren't particularly noted for the written word.

Tom Lehrer. Here's a link to the song.