A lothario is a man who unscrupulously seduces women. The term originated from Nicholas Rowe’s 1703 play The Fair Penitent, where a character with that name was depicted as someone who seduced women without conscience. Interestingly, the name was not invented by Rowe; it was previously used for a similar character in William Davenant’s 1630 tragedy The Cruel Brother. The word may have evolved from a stock character into its current meaning. The name itself comes from Old English Hlothari, which literally meant “famous warrior”: hloth derives from Old High German lut, meaning “noisy” or “famous” from Proto-Indo-European klutos, also meaning “famous”, and the other element is heri, the Old English word for “army” from PIE korio, meaning “war”.
