1650s, from French érotique (16c.), from Greek erotikos "caused by passionate love, referring to love," from eros (genitive erotos) "sexual love" (see Eros). Earlier form was erotical (1620s).
Entries linking to erotic
Eros n.
god of love, late 14c., from Greek eros (plural erotes), "god or personification of love; (carnal) love," from eran, eramai, erasthai "to desire," which is of uncertain origin. Beekes suggests it is from Pre-Greek.
The Freudian sense of "urge to self-preservation and sexual pleasure" is from 1922. Ancient Greek distinguished four ways of love: erao "to be in love with, to desire passionately or sexually;" phileo "have affection for;" agapao "have regard for, be contented with;" and stergo, used especially of the love of parents and children or a ruler and his subjects.
auto-erotic adj.
also autoerotic, 1898, coined by Havelock Ellis from auto- + erotic. Related: Auto-eroticism (1898). The opposite is allo-erotic.
By "auto-erotism" I mean the phenomena of spontaneous sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus proceeding, directly or indirectly, from another person. [Ellis, "Auto-Erotism," in The Alienist and Neurologist, April 1898]
Eros (n.)auto-erotic (adj.)erotica (n.)eroticism (n.)eroticize (v.)erotomania (n.)homoerotic (adj.)