Lothario

• lothario

Named after Lothario, a character in the play The Fair Penitent,^[1][2] a reference to a seducer of the same name in the metastory of the Quixote called The Impertinent Curious Man.^[3]

• IPA^(key): /loʊˈθɛəɹioʊ/

• Audio (Canada):

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Lothario (plural Lotharios)

1. A man whose chief interest is seducing, usually women.

   Synonyms: lady-killer, Casanova, Romeo; see also Thesaurus:promiscuous man, Thesaurus:libertine

   Coordinate term: Romeo

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Schools and Schoolmasters”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 437:

     High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of his bed; for alas! all fish bed in common.

   • 1919, Rudyard Kipling, “A Code of Morals”, in Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads:

     He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold, / As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old; / But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby my ditty hangs) / That snowy-haired Lothario Lieutenant-General Bangs.

   • 2023 October 29, Zoe Williams, “‘The ironic, metrosexual lothario’: how Matthew Perry captured the spirit of the age”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     So much of the plot structure rested on Chandler being the second string: the maladroit loser to Joey’s lothario, the joker skating beneath Ross’s romantic gravity.

• Lothario on Wikipedia.Wikipedia