K. T. Greenfeld
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Unsexy Orgies
Orgy is a word which for many immediately conjures salacious imagery and blushed cheeks. However, both the oldest and the most recently-adopted senses of this word contain meanings which may not be at all sexual in nature. The word first came into English in the middle of the 16th century in reference to secret ceremonial rites, particularly those of the Romans and ancient Greeks, which involved singing and dancing. The licentious meaning was not added until the beginning of the 18th century. And the most recent senses (“a riotous display” and “a manifestation of extreme indulgence”), which may describe such things as an assembly of garish colors or a spectacle of destruction, appear to date from the late 19th century.
Examples of orgy in a Sentence
Dwight Garner, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2025
Recent claims, in the conservative press, of a twelve-person orgy among officials at a Veterans Affairs medical center in Tennessee, offer salacious elaboration on this theme of erotic pathology, casting the bureaucrat in the bedroom as at once perverse and virtuosic.
—Charlie Tyson, The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2025
The real prize at this feast, however, will be those molecules that most efficiently store energy, your fatty acids, so that the caloric orgy reaches its apotheosis in that fattiest of all your organs, that thing which seemed most you: your brain.
—Cutter Wood, Harper's Magazine, 28 Feb. 2025
Nobody is drugged and no crazy orgy takes place.
—Erik Kain, Forbes, 17 Mar. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Orgy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orgy. Accessed 25 Apr. 2025.
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orgy
noun
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