Tired of using the same word

[A. E. Lowan]

You have a personal distaste for the word?

Oh, no. "Tongue" is a perfectly good word, just like "moist." But I don't think most synonyms for it are sexy, like "proboscis." Good, serviceable word. But way not sexy.

Okay, this just popped into my head, so you get to suffer with me. Can you just imagine trying to describe sexy and the description looks like, "their swollen proboscis throbbed with sensation."

 

[Prince of Spires]

It's all about context though. I'm sure you could write a steamy scene with two biologists flirting with each other where proboscis becomes a sexy word (for them). Start with a third (non-biologist) person in the room, and they use proboscis and similar as code language to flirt without the other person realizing (or at least, they think so...). In that context having one of them say, "look at that swollen proboscis probing that delicate flower" can take on a whole lot of meaning.

You can do it