Lascivious means openly and crudely full of sexual desire. A lascivious look, lascivious remarks, lascivious behaviour.
It is formal and heavily disapproving, and it survives mainly in law and in period writing — lascivious conduct appears in older statutes. In ordinary speech it sounds archaic or comic. Note lasciviousness; and that the Latin lascivia meant playfulness and wantonness together, which is a gentler starting point than the English arrived at.
1adjectivelasciviousOpenly and crudely full of sexual desire.
“The old man gave her a lascivious wink that made her skin crawl.”
lascivious is a quality of crude desire.
Latin lasciviosus comes from lascivia, playfulness or wantonness, from lascivus, playful. The English word kept only the harder half of the meaning.
Latin
lascīviōsus
English, today
lascivious
Built from
From Latin lascīviōsus, from lascīvia (“sportiveness, lustfulness”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA