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Fornication   Listen
noun
Fornication  n.  
1.
Unlawful sexual intercourse on the part of an unmarried person; the act of such illicit sexual intercourse between a man and a woman as does not by law amount to adultery. Note: In England, the offense, though cognizable in the ecclesiastical courts, was not at common law subject to secular prosecution. In the United States it is indictable in some States at common law, in others only by statute.
2.
(Script.)
(a)
Adultery.
(b)
Incest.
(c)
Idolatry.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fornication" Quotes from Famous Books



... two chapters; but rather as an instance of Allah's power than as a warning against pederasty, which Mohammed seems to have regarded with philosophic indifference. The general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like fornication unless the offenders made a public act of penitence. But here, as in adultery, the law is somewhat too clement and will not convict unless four credible witnesses swear to have seen rem in re. I have noticed (vol. i. 211) the vicious opinion ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... originally calculated to give examples of nobler passions. From this situation of affairs among our authors, one would be apt to imagine, that the propagation of the species was at a stand, and that, not to talk of marrying and giving in marriage, there was hardly any such thing as fornication going forward among us, and that therefore our publick-spirited penmen, to prevent the world from coming to an end, employ'd all their art and eloquence to keep people in remembrance, that they were composed of different sexes. But provident nature has rendered ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... inconsistent, in his opinion, with the sanctity of the sacerdotal character. He had issued a decree prohibiting the marriage of priests, excommunicating all clergymen who retained their wives, declaring such unlawful commerce to be fornication, and rendering it criminal in the laity to attend divine worship, when such profane priests officiated at the altar [h]. This point was a great object in the politics of the Roman pontiffs; and it cost them infinitely more pains to establish it, than the propagation ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... against fornication they do really recognize, and consequently they do not admit that in any case fornication can cease to be wrong. The Church preachers never point out cases in which the command against fornication can be broken, and always teach ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... who had settled by arbitration a variety of perplexed claims between her and her relation, the Laird of Brodie, which she now repaid by particular attention to me. M'Leod started the subject of making women do penance in the church for fornication. JOHNSON. 'It is right, Sir. Infamy is attached to the crime, by universal opinion, as soon as it is known. I would not be the man who would discover it, if I alone knew it, for a woman may reform; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... 'Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:' but I say unto you, that every one that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress: and whosoever shall marry her when she is ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong

... and drink." 15, 17 v, also 20, 23. Giving them again in substance the decrees which had been given by the Apostles in their first conference, in A. D. 51; held at Jerusalem. See Acts xv: 19. James proposes their letter to the Gentiles should be "that they abstain from pollution of Idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood;" to which the conference all agreed. Now please read their unanimous decrees (xvi: 4,) from twenty-three to thirty verses. "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay upon ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates

... hundred men, no more and no less, and behold, thou hast married me." "The Divineress also foresaid that thou shouldst die, at the last of thy life, of the bite of a spider. Indeed, her saying hath been verified of the fornication and the marriage, and I fear lest her word come true no less in the death." Then they betook themselves to a place without the city, where he builded him a mansion of solid stone and white stucco and stopped ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... me, are you, you vile body-snatcher, you loathsome well-whipped scum! As if we didn't know who your father was, how your mother was a harlot! You strangled your own brother, you live in fornication, you debauch the young, you unabashed lecher! Don't be in such a hurry; here is something for you to take with you; this broken pot will serve me to ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... is furnished in the fact that this professedly Christian slaveholder, amidst all his prayers and hymns, was shamelessly and boastfully encouraging, and actually compelling, in his own house, undisguised and unmitigated fornication, as a means of increasing his human stock. I may remark here, that, while this fact will be read with disgust and shame at the north, it will be laughed at, as smart and praiseworthy in Mr. Covey, at the south; for a man is no more condemned there for buying a woman and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... example, in boyhood or youth, a man appropriated an evil to himself by doing it with enjoyment from love of it—a fraud, blasphemy, revenge, or fornication—having done it freely with the assent of thought, he made it his; but if later he repents, shuns it and considers it a sin to be averse from, and so desists from it freely according to reason, then the opposite good is appropriated to him. Good then ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... Jehovah. They state that it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to them to require the converts from paganism "to abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication." [87:1] And yet, without any special revelation, they might have felt themselves warranted to give such instructions in such language, for surely they were at liberty to say that the Holy Ghost had interdicted fornication; and, as the expounders of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... less severely, if the offender had been really guilty of it to supply the necessities of life. It is a singular circumstance, that the Peruvian law made no distinction between fornication and adultery, both being equally punished with death. Yet the law could hardly have been enforced, since prostitutes were assigned, or at least allowed, a residence in the suburbs of the cities. See Garcilasso, Com Real., Parte 1, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... cup of abomination. But, I trow, ye are deaf as adders upon that side of the head; ay, ye are deceived with her enchantments, and ye traffic with her merchandise, and ye are drunk with the cup of her fornication!' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... the heads of the devotees of modern churchianity, is proclaimed by divine authority: "And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh ... are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.... Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh ... despise dominion and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... in churches and market steeds, are often put to rebuke. Howbeit, as this is counted with some either as no punishment at all to speak of, or but little regarded of the offenders, so I would with adultery and fornication to have some sharper law. For what great smart is it to be turned out of hot sheet into a cold, or after a little washing in the water to be let loose again unto their former trades? Howbeit the dragging of some of them over the Thames between Lambeth and Westminster ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... ruined his fortune; he had supplied his extravagance by pimping; and had escaped his creditors only by becoming tribune. "Behold him," Cicero said, "as he appeared when consul at a meeting called by the arch-thief Clodius, full of wine, and sleep, and fornication, his hair moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid, and declaring, with a voice thick with drink, that he disapproved of putting citizens to death without trial." [8] As to Piso, his best recommendation was ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... terms of peace soever they offer you, abhor, and all shall be well betwixt you and me. And that you may the better know them from those that are the natives of Mansoul, I will give you this brief schedule of the names of the chief of them; and they are these that follow:- The Lord Fornication, the Lord Adultery, the Lord Murder, the Lord Anger, the Lord Lasciviousness, the Lord Deceit, the Lord Evil-Eye, Mr. Drunkenness, Mr. Revelling, Mr. Idolatry, Mr. Witch-craft, Mr. Variance, Mr. Emulation, Mr. Wrath, Mr. Strife, Mr. Sedition, and Mr. Heresy. These are some of the chief, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... changed over the years, many of the political attitudes have remained consistent. Graffiti is an irreverent form, with strong popular and anti-establishment elements. As actions common to all classes, eating, drinking, defecation, and fornication find their lowly record in ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... but it sometimes jars one's sense of propriety to see people hold up their hands in holy horror at the sound of these words, as if their mention were something unspeakably wicked, while they themselves would look fornication, for instance, straight in the face without a shudder ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... nothing, if I shall not live well, and adorn the nobleness of my race,—that is, his testimony and confession, by which he was glorified in Christ. It profiteth not the Jews to say, 'We were not born of fornication, we have one father, the Lord;' and, a little after, 'Abraham is our father.' Whatever they may say, whatever they will assume, if they have not the faith of Abraham they make their boast in vain; for they will not be saved ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... claimed the greatest piety were the sorriest scoundrels in the land. "They drink and vomit," he said, "quarrel and fight, rob and pillage one another by cunning and by violence, neigh and skip from wantonness, shout and whistle, and commit fornication and adultery worse than any of the others." He watched the priests, and found them no better than the people. Some snored, wallowing in feather beds; some feasted till they became speechless; some performed ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... the women, wherewith he fell down fainting. They sprinkled rose-water on his face, till he came to himself, when he embraced Mahdiyah and carried her into a sitting-chamber, where he sat with her; and they twain lay together that night without fornication. Next morning he went out and sitting down on the throne of his kingship, robed his uncle Al-Damigh with a robe of honour; and appointed him his viceroy over all Al-Irak, commending Mahdiyah to his care, till he should ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... preserve and ever build higher and stronger the wall which was to protect us, so that the sacred Law and the service of the one God might continue. Israel was but a handful in the midst of Philistines and Amalekites, nations which worshipped Baal with fornication and all kinds of uncleanness, and Israel was ever at the point of mingling with them. Then it would have been forgotten as they will be forgotten; but if it will only abide in the Law, as given in thunder and lightning in the wilderness, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... of fornication may be punished by her mother or female guardian, but if the crime is flagrant and repeated, so as to become a matter of general gossip, and the mother fails to correct it, the matter may be taken up by the ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell

... garden two old men, its keepers, and both Shaykhs fell in love with her and sought her favours; but she refused, whereupon said they, "Unless thou yield thy body to us, we will bear witness against thee of fornication." Quoth she, "Allah will preserve me from your frowardness!" Then they opened the garden-gate and cried out, and the folk came to them from all places, saying "What aileth you?" Quoth they, "We found this damsel in company with a youth who was doing lewdness with her; but he escaped ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... ordinaries having episcopal jurisdiction, to punish and chastise such religious men, being within the bounds of their jurisdiction, as shall be convict before them, by lawful proof, of adultery, fornication, incest, or other fleshly incontinency, by committing them to ward and prison, there to remain for such time as shall be thought convenient for the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... still two vices which are fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to remain undisguised, not even concealing from themselves the fact that they are vices and not virtues. One is drunkenness; the other fornication. The viciousness of these vices is so little disguised, even from those who habitually practise them, that there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the right Biblical name. Why not ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... sir, you have persuaded me: I will arm my conscience with a resolution of making her an honourable amends by marriage; for to-morrow morning a parson shall authorise my labours, and turn fornication into duty. And, moreover, I will enjoin myself, by way of penance, not to touch her ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... upon several Occasions (that have occurred since I first took into my Thoughts the present State of Fornication) weighed with my self, in behalf of guilty Females, the Impulses of Flesh and Blood, together with the Arts and Gallantries of crafty Men; and reflect with some Scorn that most Part of what we in our Youth think gay ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... difficulty of the missionaries in the Sandwich Islands was teaching the women chastity; they knew neither the word nor the thing. Adultery, incest, fornication, were the common order of things, accepted by public opinion, and even consecrated ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Rome. BOSWELL. 'So then, Sir, you would allow of no irregular intercourse whatever between the sexes?' JOHNSON. 'To be sure I would not, Sir. I would punish it much more than it is done, and so restrain it. In all countries there has been fornication, as in all countries there has been theft; but there may be more or less of the one, as well as of the other, in proportion to the force of law. All men will naturally commit fornication, as all men will naturally steal. And, Sir, it is very absurd to argue, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury." Yes, truly, the divine nature is emphatically denied to all unregenerated men, and denied, too, by that divine teacher thus eulogized. Hear him: "Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... as counsel at the bar of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, where a Probationer[507], (as one licensed to preach, but not yet ordained, is called,) was opposed in his application to be inducted, because it was alledged that he had been guilty of fornication five years before. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, if he has repented, it is not a sufficient objection. A man who is good enough to go to heaven, is good enough to be a clergyman.' This was a humane and liberal sentiment. But the character of a clergyman is more sacred than that of an ordinary Christian. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, men; but don't miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good gifts. Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye, good-bye! Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it'll spoil. Be careful with the butter—twenty cents the pound it was, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... first—Prudence. It can only be through some defect of the understanding, if people are wanting in duty to themselves. Now, although a man may know little of himself, is it certain the legislator knows more? Would it be possible to extirpate drunkenness or fornication by legal punishment? All that can be done in this field is to subject the offences, in cases of notoriety, to a slight censure, so as to cover them with a slight shade of artificial disrepute, and thus give strength and influence ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... refusing to let the people of God offer sacrifices where and in the manner the Lord desired it, what will be the punishments for those who, by a godless system of education, abolish religion? If God slew twenty-four thousand men of the Israelites for having fallen into fornication (Numb. xxv.), with what punishments will He visit those who add, to the sin of fornication and adultery, even the crime of child-murder! Numberless child-murders are committed daily in the land. Assuredly ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there those, who hold fast the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast an enticement to sin before the children of Israel: to eat idol-sacrifices, and to commit fornication. So thou hast also those, who hold fast the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, in like manner. Repent; or else I will come to thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He, who hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the congregations: ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... when you have done, the whole audience, far from being offended, shall return you thanks as a deliverer of precious and useful truths. Nay, further, it is but to venture your lungs, and you may preach in Covent Garden against foppery and fornication, and something else; against pride, and dissimulation, and bribery at Whitehall. You may expose rapine and injustice in the Inns-of-Court chapel, and in a City pulpit be as fierce as you please against avarice, hypocrisy, and extortion. It is ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... that they imagine themselves at perfect Liberty; and their open Gallantries perfectly countenance the Imagination: for tho' Adultery is look'd upon as a grievous Crime, and punish'd accordingly; yet Fornication is softened with the title of a Venial Sin, and they seem to ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe

... up in murther or in crueltie, For fore this time, this time is all too soone, I never slue or did consent to kill; So helpe me God as this I speake is true! I could say something of my innocence, In fornication and adulterie, But I confesse the iustest man alive, That beares about the frailtie of a man, Cannot excuse himselfe from daily sinne In thought, in word, and deed. Such was my life. I never hated Beech in all my life, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... Pagan history show the real results of all their speculations upon these questions. They are comprehensively presented in the following: "They became vain in their imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened. They were filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, deceit, malignity. They were backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without natural affection, implacable and unmerciful." Their manners and habits ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880

... his clique of Harmonialists say there are no evil spirits. I emphatically deny the statement. Five of my friends destroyed themselves, and I attempted it, by direct spiritual influences. Every crime in the calendar has been committed by mortal movers of viewless beings. Adultery, fornication, suicides, desertions, unjust divorces, prostitution, abortion, insanity, are not evils, I suppose. I charge all these to this scientific Spiritualism. It has also broken up families, squandered ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... Easter season, and on the 23d of August, when it is said that the licentiousness practiced in the temples compared with those of the "Harvest Homes" of Europe when the sun was in Libra and the harvest had been garnered in. Vulcan was the "God of fornication" or of passion. ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... taken up and read by the people generally, either of high or low degree, alike; and somehow these people seem never to require an apology on the part of the author, for having attempted rapes, seductions, or even unavoidable fornication committed through the leaves of the story, or having it imaginably take place between acts on the stage. But if the physician writes a book touching anything connected with the generative functions, and with the best intent and for the good of humanity, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... in rescuing from corruption that mass of uncleanness, which has been removed thither from our own shores! Now, alas! nowhere more than in some of the Australian settlements "are the works of the flesh manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... [Of trotting paritors] An apparitor, or paritor. is an officer of the bishop's court who carries out citations; as citations are most frequently issued for fornication, the paritor is put under ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... do'st thou know that, Constable? Elb. Marry sir, by my wife, who, if she had bin a woman Cardinally giuen, might haue bin accus'd in fornication, adultery, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... that Christians are not forbidden? One thing I am afraid they do mean, for I see them act up to it steadily enough. That Jews were forbidden to covet, but that Christians are not; that Jews might not commit fornication, but Christians may; that Jews might not lie, but Christians may; that Jews might not use false weights and measures, or adulterate goods for sale, but that Christians may. My friends, if I am asked the reason of the hypocrisy which seems the besetting sin of England, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... his brother-in-law he said, "Mock not at my council, my lord. In case you follow the course you are in, you shall never see the face of Jesus Christ, you are deceived with the merchandise of the whore that makes the world drunk out of the cup of her fornication; your soul is built upon a sandy foundation. When you come to my state, you will find no comfort in your religion. You know not what wrestling I have had before I came to this state of comfort. The kingdom ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... p. 45, in Thesaur. Temporum Scaliger. Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 7. p. 196. Gregor. Magnus, Dialog. iii. 32. None of these witnesses have specified the number of the confessors, which is fixed at sixty in an old menology, (apud Ruinart. p. 486.) Two of them lost their speech by fornication; but the miracle is enhanced by the singular instance of a boy who had never spoken before his tongue ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... it will be bought. It implies, that men will lay voluntary restraints upon themselves, in proportion as they are indulged by their governours; and that all prohibitory laws tend to the promotion of the practices which they condemn; it implies, that a stop can only be put to fornication by increasing the number of prostitutes, and that theft is only to be restrained by leaving your ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... each and every priest who commits fornication, let it be with whom it may; with permission to perform all the duties of the Church, and to receive and hold new benefices, provided he pay into the papal treasury ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... things that came from food unfit, through the violation of the command of God regarding what they should eat. Don't go around whispering that the fall consisted in the mother of the race losing her chastity and her virtue. It is not true; the human race is not born of fornication. These bodies that are given unto us are given in the way that God has provided. Let it not be said that the patriarch of the race, who stood with the gods before he came here upon the earth, and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... work done! By Our Lord God's good help, I have turned and set in the way toward the gate of Paradise a lady, who, albeit not sinning precisely in the way of fornication spoken of by the Prophet, yet was wont to employ for men's temptation the clay whereof the Creator had kneaded her that she might serve and adore him withal. She will forsake these naughty habits to adopt a better life. I have throughly changed her. ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... country conquered by their boldness and through a thousand dangers, at the extremity of the world. It is related that the inflexible Iermak, managing the Christian warriors in the combats, treated them with rigor for the least fault, and that he punished disobedience and fornication equally with death. He not only exacted complete submission from his whole troop, but also purity of soul, in order to render himself agreeable to the master of the earth and to the Master of heaven, persuaded that God would accord him the victory with a small number ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various



Words linked to "Fornication" :   adultery, criminal conversation, free love



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