lothario
noun
-ˈthär-
Did you know?
Lothario comes from The Fair Penitent (1703), a tragedy by Nicholas Rowe. In the play, Lothario is a notorious seducer, extremely attractive but a haughty and unfeeling scoundrel beneath his charming exterior. He seduces Calista, an unfaithful wife and later the fair penitent of the title. After the play was published, the character of Lothario became a stock figure in English literature. For example, Samuel Richardson modeled the character of Lovelace on Lothario in his 1748 novel Clarissa. As the character became well known, his name became progressively more generic, and lothario (often capitalized) has since been used to describe a foppish, unscrupulous rake.
Examples of lothario in a Sentence
Hadley Hall Meares, Vanity Fair, 26 Dec. 2025
In a Cinderella-esque twist, that woman is actually a maid named Sophie, who is right under the same roof as our lovestruck lothario.
—Jillian Sederholm, Entertainment Weekly, 25 Dec. 2025
Michael Park’s Zeus is a grade-A lothario, the kind of man your mother warned you about.
—David Lyman, Cincinnati Enquirer, 27 Sep. 2025
Nimoy's successors in the role, Zachary Quinto and Ethan Peck, have also negotiated the two sides of Spock's human/Vulcan heritage with style — Peck has even turned him into something of an interstellar lothario.
—Richard Edwards, Space.com, 29 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for lothario
Cite this Entry
“Lothario.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lothario. Accessed 3 Jan. 2026.
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