lust

[luhst] /lʌst/
noun
1.
intense sexual desire or appetite.
2.
uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.
3.
a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually followed by for):
a lust for power.
4.
ardent enthusiasm; zest; relish:
an enviable lust for life.
5.
Obsolete.
  1. pleasure or delight.
  2. desire; inclination; wish.
verb (used without object)
6.
to have intense sexual desire.
7.
to have a yearning or desire; have a strong or excessive craving (often followed by for or after).
Origin
before 900; Middle English luste, Old English lust; cognate with Dutch, German lust pleasure, desire; akin to Old Norse lyst desire; see list4
Related forms
unlusting, adjective
Synonyms
7. crave, hunger, covet, yearn.
Examples from the web for lust
  • The next generation of battlefield weapons might be bombs that make enemy soldiers fall in lust with each other.
  • With the first feeling of lust, her mind begins working at a furious rate.
  • The brilliance of the stunt was to exploit the networks lust for spectacle to get them to broadcast the call for their own demise.
  • Music nuts lust after spatial sound: output so precise you can pinpoint each instrument's location in the recording hall.
  • The first iPod was an object of techno-lust, and the product line's design has only become more enchanting.
  • The world's lust for cheap and, consequently, lower quality products emanate from an unsustainable zombie consumerism.
  • Greed is the lust for money that causes one to do immoral things to get it.
  • For one thing, the lust for war had the public in its grip.
  • But he delivered it in a ragged, world-weary voice, in a larger context of angry lust and self-loathing.
British Dictionary definitions for lust

lust

/lʌst/
noun
1.
a strong desire for sexual gratification
2.
a strong desire or drive
verb
3.
(intransitive; often foll by after or for) to have a lust (for)
Word Origin
Old English; related to Old High German lust desire, Old Norse losti sexual desire, Latin lascīvus playful, wanton, lustful. Compare listless
Word Origin and History for lust
n.

Old English lust "desire, appetite, pleasure," from Proto-Germanic *lustuz (cf. Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch, German lust, Old Norse lyst, Gothic lustus "pleasure, desire, lust"), from PIE *las- "to be eager, wanton, or unruly" (cf. Latin lascivus "wanton, playful, lustful;" see lascivious).

In Middle English, "any source of pleasure or delight," also "an appetite," also "a liking for a person," also "fertility" (of soil). Sense of "sinful sexual desire, degrading animal passion" (now the main meaning) developed in late Old English from the word's use in Bible translations (e.g. lusts of the flesh to render Latin concupiscentia carnis [I John ii:16]); the cognate words in other Germanic languages tend still to mean simply "pleasure."

v.

c.1200, "to wish, to desire," from lust (n.) and Old English lystan (see list (v.4)). Sense of "to have a strong sexual desire (for or after)" is first attested 1520s in biblical use. Related: Lusted; lusting.

Related Abbreviations for lust

LUST

leaking underground storage tanks
lust in the Bible

sinful longing; the inward sin which leads to the falling away from God (Rom. 1:21). "Lust, the origin of sin, has its place in the heart, not of necessity, but because it is the centre of all moral forces and impulses and of spiritual activity." In Mark 4:19 "lusts" are objects of desire.