fornication

pronunciation

How to pronounce fornication in British English: UK [ˌfɔ:nɪ'keɪʃn] word uk audio image

How to pronounce fornication in American English: US [ˌfɔrnɪˈkeʃən] word us audio image

Noun:

voluntary sexual intercourse between persons not married to each other
extramarital sex that willfully and maliciously interferes with marriage relations

Word Origin

fornication: fornication: [13] Latin fornix denoted an ‘arch’ or ‘vault’, and hence came to be used in the late republican period for the sort of vaulted underground dwellings where the dregs of Roman society – tramps, prostitutes, petty criminals, etc – lived. Early Christian writers homed in on the prostitutes, and employed the term with the specific meaning ‘brothel’, whence the verb fornicārī ‘have illicit sexual intercourse’ and its derivative fornicatiō, source of English fornication.

fornication (n.): c. 1300, from Old French fornicacion "fornication, lewdness; prostitution; idolatry" (12c.), from Late Latin fornicationem (nominative fornicatio), noun of action from past participle stem of fornicari "to fornicate," from Latin fornix (genitive fornicis) "brothel" (Juvenal, Horace), originally "arch, vaulted chamber, a vaulted opening, a covered way," probably an extension, based on appearance, from a source akin to fornus "brick oven of arched or domed shape" (see furnace). Strictly, "voluntary sex between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman;" extended in the Bible to adultery. The sense extension in Latin is perhaps because Roman prostitutes commonly solicited from under the arches of certain buildings.

2. Fornication in public was common and even children were routinely treated for venereal disease .

4. They said : you narrated that some monkeys stoned a she-monkey for fornication .

5. But it 's also a fact that the wood-vaulted rooms of old were used expressly for the plying of a particular trade in ancient rome , prostitution ( hence , fornication ) .