bodice-rippery

English

Etymology

From bodice ripper +‎ -y.

Pronunciation

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Noun

bodice-rippery (uncountable)

1. (informal) The archetypical content of bodice rippers; violent or aggressive sex in romance fiction.
   • 1990 May, Peter T. Garratt, “Ys OK”, in Interzone, page 66:

     She says that her first novel was born out of a profound love of medieval history, but I fear that what she really loves is historical romance, fantasy, and bodice-rippery.

   • 2016, The Chemist review, Kirkus Reviews, 15 November 2016, page 188:

     A tale of skulduggery, bodice rippery, and shoot-’em-up action unfolds, complete with help from a luscious mistress of disguise who could have stepped right out of a James Bond novel.

   • 2020, Hannah McCann, Catherine M. Roach, “Sex and sexuality”, in Jayashree Kamblé, Eric Murphy Selinger, Hsu-Ming Teo, editors, The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction, page 422:

     While the genre has generally distanced itself from bodice-rippery, romance authors do continue to play with the look or feel or meaning of non-consensual sex and what’s sometimes called “dubious consent” or “dub-con” sex.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:bodice-rippery.

Synonyms

• bodice-ripping