Is “sensual” sexier than “sensuous”?
The poet John Milton invented “sensuous” because he apparently felt that the existing word, “sensual,” was getting too sexy for his purposes.
“Sensuous” first appeared in writing, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, in Milton’s essay Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England (1641).
In the relevant passage, Milton contrasts the “Soule” with “her visible, and sensuous collegue the body.”
He used the word again in a 1644 essay on education. This quotation comes from a passage in which he discusses practical arts like logic and rhetoric:
“To which Poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being lesse suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.”
It seems the author of Paradise Lost regarded “sensual” as inappropriate for exalted writing and needed something a bit drier.
@FiorenzaMella
“Sensuous” first appeared in writing, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, in Milton’s essay Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England (1641).
In the relevant passage, Milton contrasts the “Soule” with “her visible, and sensuous collegue the body.”
He used the word again in a 1644 essay on education. This quotation comes from a passage in which he discusses practical arts like logic and rhetoric:
“To which Poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being lesse suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.”
It seems the author of Paradise Lost regarded “sensual” as inappropriate for exalted writing and needed something a bit drier.
@FiorenzaMella
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