Obs. [f. LICKEROUS + -NESS.] Fondness for good fare; gen. keen appetite or desire. Const. of, after, inf. with to. Also, lecherousness.
c. 1380. Wyclif, Wks. (1880), 61. Likerousnesse & lustis of here bely.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Wife’s Prol., 611. Venus me yaf my lust, my likerousnesse. Ibid. (c. 1386), Pars. T., ¶ 667. Auarice … is likerousnesse in herte to haue erthely thynges.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 304/2. Lykerowsnesse, delicacia.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, V. (1622), 450. Whether … the likerousnesse of dominion [can] make you beyond iustice.
a. 1638. Mede, Wks., I. (1672), 128. As perhaps licorousness of Wine before had caused many of them to do.
1657. Reeve, God’s Plea, 129. A people … so given over to licorousnesse, that it is an hard thing to get a Cook to please them.
1665. J. Spencer, Vulg. Prophecies, 119. That natural liquorousness in the minds of men after the knowledg of things to come.
