Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

After decades of lipstick ads on TV, I'm surprised to realize that I have no idea what makes one one set of lips more sexy than another.  If she's got a finger dragging the fellow to her, and she's saying, "I need you to make love to me, well, and thoroughly," or if she is unbuttoning or unzipping him with her lips, I suppose that's sexy, but I'm a male, and the word "yes" coming through those lips seems to reach a quantum level of sexiness.

This makes me think of the woman on the street corner who says, "If you can say it in three words, I'll do it for $300", to which he replied by handing her three Benjamins and softly whispering in her ear, "paint my house".

 Kinda hard for me to always make out things on the car radio, where lip reading doesn't help, and there is road noise, not to mention the distraction of driving.  I wonder if it might have been some neologism you misheard, something like "osculo-proclivity".

Glenn said
Hm. Greek for lips? In a Bible concordance, I spot the Greek word cheilos for lip
cheilos
That seems a tad close to chiro- so maybe something that has cheilo- or chilo- but I can't seem to find anything.

Of course, Latin is labia.

To be technical, the southern lips are the vulva.  The labia are just flaps of skin that surround the vulva.  That's why I used osculum, which is not specifically oral, but at least it's not specifically genital. 

It seems the Greek word cheilos is used for lip, for edge, and for shore, buy where it's used in the bible, it's used in the context of speaking, rather than other uses for the lips, like kissing, sucking, spitting, whistling, etc.  (It's found in Matthew 15:8, Mark 7:6, Romans 3:13, 1 Corinthians 14:21, Hebrews 13:15, and 1 Peter 3:10.)  I happen to think that a woman lying next to me, telling me how her day went, is powerfully seductive, but I don't get that freom simply looking at a woman's lips.  If she's slowly and seductively licking hger lips and slowly consuming a popsicle, while wearing knee pads, and a flat-topped helmet so I have a place to rest my beer, that's another matter, but that isn't specifically about the appearance of the lips, either.   

Maybe we should be looking for another word, one that means rich and creamy, not thin and cruel lips but full lips full lips without the coarse bloated appearance of Angelina Jolie's collagen-injected lips. No suggestions right now for that. I'll have to think on it a bit.