sensual or sensuous?
Both words are connected with gratification of the human senses. Sensual is the older word, and in the 17th century it developed special meanings associated with the bodily appetites, especially eating and above all sexual satisfaction: Her mouth looked sensual and inviting.They enjoyed the sensual pleasures of the table. About this time the poet John Milton seems to have invented the word sensuous to refer more specifically to the aesthetic and spiritual senses (seeing, hearing, thinking), and it was taken up by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 19th century. In current use, it is almost impossible to keep the two sets of meanings apart, since the senses cannot readily be compartmentalized in this way, but it is prudent to have regard for the main distinction when using these words. Sensuous, for example, is the word to use in connection with music or poetry: The conductor relished the sensuous parts of Ravel's score.
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