A woman who is described as deliberately drawing a man toward wanting her sexually. Before you use it, know how it feels: this is a literary, old-fashioned, and rather loaded word. It belongs to novels, film reviews, and newspaper stories, not to normal conversation, and it carries an old idea that a man's desire was the woman's doing and therefore her fault. Because of that, many people today find it sexist, and you will most often meet it either in older writing or used knowingly — jokingly, or in describing a film character type, like the dangerous woman in an old black-and-white movie. There is no everyday male equivalent in the same shape; "tempter" exists but is rare and usually not about sex at all. Advice for a student: recognise it when you read it, and reach for plain words when you write.