voluptuary

Definition

One whose life is devoted to sensual appetites; a pleasure-seeker, a sensualist.

Etymology

From French voluptuaire, or directly from its etymon Late Latin voluptuārius, from Latin voluptārius (“pleasure-seeker; agreeable, delightful, pleasant; sensual”), from voluptās (“delight, pleasure, satisfaction”) + -ārius (suffix forming adjectives from nouns). Voluptās is derived from volup (“with pleasure; agreeably, pleasantly, satisfactorily”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *welh₁- (“to choose; to want”)) + -tās (suffix forming feminine abstract nouns indicating a state of being).

Example Sentences

• "But Mrs. Cole, in oppoſition to this, aſſured me that the gentlemen I ſhould be preſented to, were, by their rank and taſte of things, infinitely ſuperior to the being touch'd with any glare of dreſs, or ornaments, ſuch as ſilly women rather confound, and overlay, than ſet off their beauty with; that theſe veteran voluptuaries knew better than not to hold them in the higheſt contempt, […]"
• "His features might have been called good, had there not lurked under the pent-house of his eye, that sly epicurean twinkle which indicates the cautious voluptuary."
• "St. Clare, who was in heart a poetical voluptuary, smiled as Miss Ophelia made her remark on his premises, […]"

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