| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| fornication |
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| SYLLABICATION: | for·ni·ca·tion |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  fôr n -k  sh n |
| NOUN: | Sexual intercourse between partners who are not married to each other. | | WORD HISTORY: | The word fornication had a lowly beginning suitable to what has long been the low moral status of the act to which it refers. The Latin word fornix, from which fornicti , the ancestor of fornication, is derived, meant “a vault, an arch.” The term also referred to a vaulted cellar or similar place where prostitutes plied their trade. This sense of fornix in Late Latin yielded the verb fornicr , “to commit fornication,” from which is derived fornicti, “whoredom, fornication.” Our word is first recorded in Middle English about 1303.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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