Talk:arouse

The euphemistic or medical sense is very common, I added it

The verb arouse has two or three separate sexual meanings, in my opinion. Only one was reflected on this page. I added one more, what I consider the euphemistic sense, because it is extremely common. The first sense, which was already on Wiktionary, deals with sexual thoughts and feelings, and it may or may not correlate with physiological changes in the genitals. The example sentence given really highlights this, it was (and it remains):

"I can't keep my eyes off the dancer; she arouses me greatly."

I added the second sense, which I consider euphemistic, which is that to arouse means to cause a penile erection in a man or physical signs of arousal in a woman, such as a clitoral erection or lubrication. I consider it euphemistic because people will often say aroused instead of gave (me/you/him) an erection in order to avoid the very blunt sexual terminology. Consider this example:

"He took off the towel, and I could see that he was fully aroused."

People use language like that very often, it is a way to avoid dispassionate medical jargon (e.g. "his penis displayed a high degree of tumescence") and also avoid vulgar language (e.g. "he had a massive boner"). For these reasons, I tagged it as (euphemistic) in the main entry. I would say it also has a medical sense which is not at all euphemistic, but also definitely has nothing to do with thoughts or feelings and has everything to do with the physical status of certain organs. That is field-specific and I'm not sure it is different than the euphemistic sense that I added, so I will leave it out. Fluoborate (talk) 21:23, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I would like to see any real citations of this. Currently we have none. Equinox ◑ 00:42, 15 August 2021 (UTC)