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amatorculist

It is listed in A New Universal Technical Etymological and Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language by John Craig, 1854 as:

AMATORCULIST, a-ma-tor'ku-list, s. (amatorculus, Lat.) A little pitiful insignificant lover; a pretender to affection.

As stated, it’s a close borrowing from the Latin diminutive phrase amatorculus, which means literally “little lover.” A Latin Dictionary by Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short adds the note, “a little, sorry lover.” It is a compound of the noun amator “lover, someone who loves,” and the suffix -culus, which creates the diminutive sense, like a familiar or pet name.

Amator is the noun actor of the verb amare, which means “to love.” Interestingly, this is actually also the word we borrowed both the French and English cognates amateur from. Although we sometimes use amateur in English in a sort of derogatory way, the original meaning is purely taken from the Latin: “a lover of something, someone who does something for the sake of enjoyment.”

caricia

Although we have the English caress, I personally like the sound of the Spanish caricia much better. It feels more intimate somehow?

The romantic root for both of these is the Italian carezza (interestingly, the English is a layer removed, coming through the French caresse). Carezza, meaning “caress or pet” is from the Italian noun caro, which is “dear, beloved, precious, sweetheart” or alternately, “expensive.” The -ezza is a sort of nominalizing suffix. The Latin predecessor is carus of the same meaning.

Depending on the source, the Proto-Indo-European root is written as either -keh or -ka, “to desire or to wish.” Cherish is another sweet word from the same PIE.

illecebrous

A now almost obsolete word meaning “alluring, enticing, captivating.”

Although I couldn’t find any published modern dictionaries which have illecebrous, it does exist in a few prior to the 20th century, including:

A Dictionary of the English Language by Robert Gordon Latham, 1866 “Illecebrous adj. [Lat. illecebras = allurements.] Full of allurements.”

A Dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster, LL.D., Vol I, 1828 “ILLECEBROUS, a. [L. illecebrosus.] Alluring; full of allurement”

An Universal Etymological English Dictionary, the Fifth Edition by N. Bailey, 1731 “ILLECEBROUS [illecebrosus, L.]that inticeth or allureth”

Interestingly, there are several references to it being used in the 1531 volume The Boke named the Governour by Sir Thomas Elyot, a scholar whose work promoted the use of English as opposed to the traditional Latin.

It derives from the Latin illecebrosus, which is a suffixed form of the base adjective illecebra “enticement, allurement, means of attraction.” The verb form is illecere “to entice, seduce,” which is a prefixed version of lacere, meaning “to entice, ensnare.” Possible roots for the entire word are the Proto-Italic *lakjo, meaning “to draw or pull,” and the Indo-European lēk-, “to trap, snare.”