Other forms: fornicating, fornicated
To fornicate is to have sex outside marriage, in religious use. Fornicate with, forbidden to fornicate, they fornicated.
It is a religious and legal term rather than a descriptive one — nobody uses it neutrally, and outside scripture and jokes it barely occurs. The Latin fornix meant an arch or vault, and the vaulted passages of Rome were where prostitutes waited, which is how a word for architecture became this one.
1verbfornicateTo have sex outside marriage, in religious use.
“The preacher warned that those who fornicate would face God's judgement.”
fornicate is a sexual act.
Latin fornicari comes from fornix, an arch or vault. Roman prostitutes worked in vaulted passages, and the word followed them.
Latin
fornicātus
English, today
fornicate
Built from
1552; Latin fornicātus, perfect active participle of fornicor (see -ate), from fornix (“arch, vault; brothel”). It was customary for courtesans of the era to wait for their customers out of the rain in arched passageways.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA