erototoxin
/ɪˌɹɒtəʊˈtɒksɪn/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An addictive chemical said to be released in the brain from looking at pornography.
Example Sentences
- "Judith Reisman of the California Protective Parents Association suggested that more study of "erototoxins" could show how pornography is not speech-protected under the First Amendment."
- "As we saw in the previous chapter, pornographic erototoxins always bypass cognition and speech, reaching the right brain instantly to trigger excitatory transmitters and to overcome inhibitory transmitter functions."
- "And the winner is...Sam Brownback, who considered spending more tax money to explore the “addictive,” “mind-altering,” porn poisons that one witness called “erototoxins.”"
- "There is no such thing as an "erototoxin", of course, but there are pleasure chemicals that are released in the brain called endorphins and they are released in a wide range of activities, including physical exercise, laughter and — surprise, surprise — sex itself."
- "Not Reisman: erototoxins aren’t about pleasure; they’re a “fear-sex-shame-and-anger stimulant.”"
- "But there is no good evidence to support the claims of pseudo-experts like Dr Judith Reisman that pornography is what she calls [an] 'erototoxin', producing an addictive drug cocktail of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin, which cause the brain to be ‘structurally’ changed."
Etymology
From eroto- + toxin.
Word Breakdown
- Prefix: eroto