Fornication is sex outside marriage, in religious use. Condemn fornication, guilty of fornication, the sin of fornication.
It belongs entirely to religious and archaic legal language and is used in ordinary English only as a joke. The Latin behind it means a vaulted cellar: such places in Rome were where prostitutes worked, and the word took its meaning from the address.
1nounfornicationSex outside marriage, in religious use.
“The strict preacher condemned drinking, gambling and fornication.”
fornication is an act.
Latin fornicatio comes from fornix, a vault or arch, since prostitutes worked in vaulted cellars in Rome.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷʰer-
Latin
fornicātiō
Old French
fornicacion
Middle English
fornicacioun
English, today
fornication
Built from
From Middle English fornicacioun, from Old French fornicacion, from Latin fornicātiō, from fornix (“brothel”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA