Fornication

For many people, the term carries an overtone of moral or religious disapproval, but the significance of sexual acts to which the term is applied varies between religions, societies and cultures. In modern usage, the term is often replaced with more judgment-neutral terms like premarital sex, extramarital sex, or recreational sex.

Etymology and usage[edit]

In the original Greek version of the New Testament, the term porneia (πορνεία – "prostitution") is used 25 times (including variants such as the genitive πορνείας).^[4]


In the late 4th century, the Latin Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Greek texts, translated the term as fornicati, fornicatus, fornicata, and fornicatae. The terms fornication and fornicators are found in the 1599 Geneva Bible, the 1611 King James Version, the 1899 Catholic Douay–Rheims Bible, and the 1901 American Standard Version.^[5][6] Many modern post-World War 2 Bible translations completely avoid all usage of fornicators and fornication: English Standard Version, New Living Translation, New International Version, Christian Standard Bible, Good News Bible and Contemporary English Version do not use the terms fornication or fornicators.^[7] Where one translation may use fornication another translation may use whoredom, sexual immorality (e.g., Matthew 19:9) or more simply immoral or immorality.^[8][9][10]


In Latin, the term fornix means arch or vault. In ancient Rome, prostitutes waited for their customers out of the rain under vaulted ceilings,^[11] and fornix became a euphemism for brothels, and the Latin verb fornicare referred to a man visiting a brothel.^[12][13][14] The first recorded use in English is in the Cursor Mundi, c. 1300; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records a figurative use as well: "The forsaking of God for idols".^[15] Fornicated as an adjective is still used in botany, meaning "arched" or "bending over" (as in a leaf). John Milton plays on the double meaning of the word in The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelaty (1642): "[She] gives up her body to a mercenary whordome under those fornicated [ar]ches which she cals Gods house."^[16]