Further Antedating of "Sex Appeal"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Tweaking the "usual" definition should bring this into the fold. After all, "to stimulate the sexual instinct of the spectators" is pretty much the essence of "sex appeal."

  JL

Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Fred Shapiro
Subject: Re: Further Antedating of "Sex Appeal"
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On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Fred Shapiro wrote:

> The best friends of the theater, Shaw maintains, cannot deny that a
> considerable proportion of our theatrical entertainments stimulate the
> sexual instinct of the spectators. The play which contains no sex appeal
> is described by professional critics as being "undramatic" or "not a play
> at all."

I guess this is arguably not the usual sense, if the usual sense is
that "sex appeal" is something that arouses sexual desire for the person
who has sex appeal. One doesn't feel sexual desire for a play.

Fred Shapiro


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