Definition
Tending to excite lust; lewd; indecent; relating to sexual impurity. As a legal term, lascivious describes conduct, material, or intent that has a sexual character of a kind the law treats as criminal or civilly actionable — encompassing obscenity, indecency, and behavior that tends to deprave public morals with respect to sexual relations. The word appears most often as a modifier in criminal offense names rather than standing alone as a defined offense: lascivious carriage, lascivious cohabitation, lascivious acts, and (in modern federal law) lascivious exhibition are all distinct charged offenses. The core concept across contexts is sexual conduct or content that crosses a threshold from mere impropriety into legal culpability.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Wanton; lewd; driven by lust; lustful.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Wanton; lewd; lustful — "lascivious men; lascivious desires." Also: tending to produce voluptuous or lewd emotions, as in sensory experience.
The common and legal meanings are close but the gap matters in research: ordinary usage treats lascivious as a descriptor of moral character or emotional tone, while legal usage deploys it as a term of art marking a threshold of criminal culpability. Whether particular conduct or material is legally lascivious has been subject to judicial definition, not left to its plain moral meaning. Courts have distinguished lascivious from merely suggestive or indecent — a distinction invisible in general dictionaries.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Lascivious carriage: A Connecticut common law and statutory offense covering wanton or lewd conduct between persons of different sexes who are not married to each other, originating in lustful passion, and not otherwise punishable under specific chastity statutes. May extend to indecent acts against the will of another. Black's treats this as a Connecticut-specific term of art.
Lascivious cohabitation: Living together in a sexual relationship outside of lawful marriage. Virginia's Act of 1878 (referenced in Anderson's) required proof of the lascivious character of the cohabitation, distinguishing it from mere unmarried cohabitation.
Lascivious acts / lascivious conduct: A general category used in various state penal codes to describe sexual touching or behavior below the threshold of rape or sodomy but criminal as an offense against chastity or public decency.
Lascivious exhibition: Appears in modern federal child protection statutes, notably in the definition of sexually explicit conduct under 18 U.S.C. § 2256, where lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area is a defined element of child sexual exploitation offenses. This is the term's most significant contemporary legal context.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers face three distinct problems with this term across the Law Mind corpus.
First, the compound offenses require attention. Lascivious almost never appears alone as an offense name in historical sources — it is attached to carriage, cohabitation, acts, or exhibition. Searching for lascivious as a standalone crime will miss most of the relevant material. Each compound offense has its own elements, defenses, and jurisdictional history.
Second, the term bridges historical moral-regulatory law and modern child exploitation law. In 19th-century sources, lascivious carriage and lascivious cohabitation sit within the framework of laws governing fornication, adultery, and public morality — an area of law that has largely collapsed. In modern federal sources, lascivious reappears in child pornography and exploitation statutes, now carrying constitutional weight under First Amendment obscenity doctrine. Researchers moving between historical and modern sources must not assume continuity of meaning or legal framework.
Third, jurisdictional variation is acute. Black's 2nd Edition treats lascivious carriage as specifically a Connecticut offense, while Anderson's references Virginia's cohabitation statute. Other states used different terminology for functionally similar conduct. Historical sources that describe lascivious offenses may be describing purely local law.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's 2nd Edition and Anderson's Dictionary of Law are in close agreement on the core definition — lustful, lewd, tending to excite or arising from lust — and both emphasize the sexual impurity dimension over mere indecency. Neither source, however, fully captures the term's modern legal life in federal child exploitation statutes, which represents the most litigated contemporary use. Anderson's is more detailed on the offense categories and specifically notes the possibility that lascivious acts can include conduct against the will of another — an important precursor to modern assault-spectrum thinking. Black's is more useful for the constitutional backdrop, pointing to federal obscenity mail cases from the 1890s for the proposition that judicial construction, not plain meaning, governs what qualifies as lascivious.
Both sources reflect the late-19th-century framework in which lascivious offenses were primarily moral-regulatory rather than harm-based. The shift toward a harm-based and victim-centered framework in the 20th century is not visible in either dictionary.
Jurisdictional Note
Lascivious carriage is historically a Connecticut-specific term. Lascivious cohabitation appears in Virginia and other southern states under 19th-century moral regulation statutes. Modern federal use of lascivious is most significant in child exploitation law, where it has been subject to substantial circuit court interpretation. State penal codes vary widely in whether and how they use the term today.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Obscenity; Offenses Against Chastity and Public Morality; Child Exploitation and Abuse Law.