Lasciviousness

Lascivious desires or conduct; lustfulness; wantonness; lewdness. That form of immorality which has reference to sexual impurity; U. S. v. Males, 51 Fed. 41. See the titles next preceding. Lasciviousness and lewdness are generally treated as interchangeable if not synonymous terms. In both cases the principal use of the two words is now in each case in a secondary or derived meaning. The primary meaning of lascivus, from which the first is derived, is sportiveness, and its use in a bad sense is said to be post-Augustine, and never by Cicero; the other is derived from the Anglo-Saxon laewed, lay or unlearned.