www.alphadictionary.com

Someone on my FB page just asked why "sultry" applies both to Rita Hayworth and a sultry day. Comments?

Here's what etymonline has to say:

1590s, "oppressively hot, close and moist" (of weather), from obs. verb sulter "to swelter" (1580s), alteration of swelter. Fig. sense of "hot with lust" is attested from 1704; of women, "lascivious, sensual, arousing desire" it is recorded from 1940.

And who would we compare with Rita Hayworth today???

Perhaps 13 on House or the gal on Burn Notice. Whoops! We better quit...not sure this is still an intellectual discussion.

I am not worried about what is intellectual or not.
With so few on the site anymore, and so many driven away
with rules, months back, it better not start up again.

The word is "Sultry" and the comparison to Hayworth.
No problem discussing it. The gal on Burn Notice would
fit from my perspectives. I gave up on House when it
became all about his drug problems instead of patients
and their afflictions. There are a couple of police or
CSI shows where the female leads would also fit, but
at the moment I forget their names.

I find myself questioning whether or not a TV star can be truly "sultry." Is there enough exposure there?

Coincidentally, there is an interesting piece by Maureen Dowd in the NYT that touches upon this discussion.

Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/opini ... 0dowd.html

Can any modern actress really achieve sultry? Perhaps too much of the mystery is gone?

I have to concur; actors today don't have the same kind
of mystery they used to have. Perhaps it's too much
exposure, perhaps the media and paparazzi, perhaps
they like it that way. But the "mystery" is gone, from
my opinion.

Now here's a spanner in the works question: can a male be sultry? If so, who was or is?

Do you mean Clark Gable-esque?
I cannot think of a single one today.

Recently this word reminds me of a pivotal scene from the movie Throw Momma from the Train, where Larry (Billy Crystal's character) is searching for the right word in the novel he's working on. He needs a word that means "hot" in some sense, and as he's agonizing over it, Anne Ramsey, the titular Momma, turns to her son (played by Danny DeVito) and says, "Sultry! Owen, open a window. It's too sultry in here."

After so much refusal to yield to Owen's pleas to Larry to kill his mother, Larry hears her practically fall over the word he had been groping for and, in that moment, decides, "I'll kill her."

It's a lot funnier in context than it is in this little excerpt...

Missed that movie: maybe next time it come on
HBO or one of those channels.

It's inspired by, but not a remake of, Hitchcock's Stangers on a Train. I had posted a quickie synopsis in the first version of this post, but I always say too much. This is what IMdb says:

A bitter ex-husband. A put upon momma's boy. Both want their respective spouse and mother dead, but who will pull it off?

And considering who's involved, you know it can't be just that easy...