kinky

From kink +‎ -y.

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɪŋ.ki/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪŋki

kinky (comparative kinkier, superlative kinkiest)

1. Full of kinks; liable to kink or curl.

   kinky hair

   • 1953, James Baldwin, “The Seventh Day”, in Go Tell It on the Mountain (Penguin Classics), London: Penguin Books, published 2001, →ISBN:

     It seemed that there had never been a time when he had not known this moment of waiting while the packed church paused—the sisters in white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, heads back; the white caps of the women seeming to glow in the charged air like crowns, the kinky, gleaming heads of the men seeming to be lifted up— […]

2. (informal) Marked by unconventional sexual preferences or behavior, as fetishism, sadomasochism, and other sexual practices.
   • 1985, Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, published 1986, →ISBN, page 155:

     […] To be asked to play Scrabble […] seemed kinky in the extreme, a violation in its own way.

   • 1994, Roberta Perkins, Sex Work and Sex Workers in Australia, page ii:

     Their male customers are often identified as lonely, sleazy, and into kinky sex […]

   • 2002, Lyla Verone, The Interview:

     Scars on my back were revealed from when I was whipped by a sadomasochistic ex-lover. I wondered if it bothered anyone, but it only seemed to make everyone harder than they already were. I was a kinky girl.

3. Queer; eccentric; crotchety.

• normophilic