Etymology Learned borrowing from Latin incestus. Displaced Old English mǣġhǣmed (literally “relative-sex”). Doublet of inchaste.
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Usually Sexual relations between close relatives, especially immediate family members and sometimes first cousins, usually considered taboo.
Genetic problems caused by incest are thought to have plagued many royal families in the Middle Ages.
For a structuralist like Edmund Leach, the structure is the meaning. Genesis, for example, is about incest taboos; all the rest is noise and mystification.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light:Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, page 12:
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He was only Craster's whelp, an abomination born of incest, not the son of the King-beyond-the-Wall.2005, George R. R. Martin, A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire, page 225:
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Broadly, Usually Romantic relationships between close relatives, also widely taboo.
Etymology Learned borrowing from Latin incestus. Displaced Old English mǣġhǣmed (literally “relative-sex”). Doublet of inchaste.
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Ambitransitive To engage in incestuous sexual activities.
I do not want anyone to feel that my lesbianism is a result of being incested.1994, Kathryn Carter, Interpretive Approaches to Interpersonal Communication:
Her erotic transference ultimately devolved into a revelation that she had been consistently incested by her brother2009, Antonino Ferro, The Analytic Field: A Clinical Concept, page 206:
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[…] the most powerful of that bunch of immortal giants called Titans was Cronus, who “incested” with sister Rhea, who then birthed the Olympians (Zeus and his bunch) […]2011, Marvin Mengeling, Crows, Pete Rose, UFOs: And Other Pretty Pieces, page 2: