ecchi

Meaning

Adj

Erotic, lascivious, lewd, naughty, sexy, suggestive.

Noun

1. A genre, especially of anime and manga, featuring playful, tongue-in-cheek usage of sexualized scenes and situations such as double entendre or flirtation, while remaining non-pornographic. Often used to differentiate from hentai which features overt sexual themes.
2. A situation within a story, especially anime and manga, which ventures into the ecchi genre.

Synonyms

bodacious

dreamy

foxy

hircine

lascivious

phat

prurient

sexy

unchaste

physically attractive

shmexy

shagadelic

ginchy

zanzy

Etymology

From Japanese エッチ (etchi, “dirty; perverted”), which is derived from English aitch (“name of the letter ⟨H⟩”), which is an initialism of the romaji of Japanese 変態(へんたい) (hentai, “pervert”).
エッチ (etchi) is not a genre in Japanese; this is a development in English.