# When did "Make Love" come to mean "engage in sexual intercourse"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 2, 2007, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440 "2007-01-02T17:54:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/1 "2007-01-02T17:54:46Z")
Watching old movies, I’ve learned that the phrase “to make love” used to mean[ul]
[li]to woo[/li][li]to flirt[/li][li]to romance[/li][/ul]
In fact when I see an old film at a theatre with an audience, there’s always a few people who aren’t aware of the old meaning and chuckle confusedly when the phrase is used.
Today the phrase refers exclusively to the marriage act. When did the change occur? Films from the late 60s seem to use it to mean the old in-out, but films as late as the early 50s seem to use it in the older less penetrative sense.
The 1960 film _Let’s Make Love_: better interpreted as “Let’s Be Romantic with Each Other”, or better interpreted as “Let’s Do the Horizontal Hula”?
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/2 "2007-01-02T18:09:28Z")
So, wait just a minute, here. You’re telling me that all this time, Pepe Le Pew _wasn’t_ constantly getting laid?
☹
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/3 "2007-01-02T18:32:13Z")
[QUOTE=bienville]
Today the phrase refers exclusively to the marriage act.
[/QUOTE]
“The marriage act”? To me, that sounds like that law that Parliament passed regulating marriages. 🙂
AFAICT, sexual intercourse is not confined to marriage. Now, one can argue that it _should_ be confined to marriage, or that it ideally marks the consummation of a marriage, when all required duties to inaugurate the marriage have been performed, but if you simply referred to “the marriage act” in a sentence, I would not think of sexual intercourse first. Perhaps this is a difference in English dialecical usage.
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### Author:  [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/4 "2007-01-02T19:04:58Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace]
“The marriage act”? To me, that sounds like that law that Parliament passed regulating marriages. 🙂
AFAICT, sexual intercourse is not confined to marriage. Now, one can argue that it _should_ be confined to marriage, or that it ideally marks the consummation of a marriage, when all required duties to inaugurate the marriage have been performed, but if you simply referred to “the marriage act” in a sentence, I would not think of sexual intercourse first. Perhaps this is a difference in English dialecical usage.
[/QUOTE]
Just a fun old-timey euphemism. I can’t claim to have invented the phrase.
People had topics they didn’t talk about so they needed to have expressions to use when they talked about the things they didn’t talk about.
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### Author:  [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/5 "2007-01-02T19:51:52Z")
Remember in one of the Chronicles of Narnia books, where C.S. Lewis describes little Lucy (the youngest child) going about the house making love to everybody?
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### Author:  [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/6 "2007-01-02T19:55:49Z")
From the time that first I became enlightened as to what the horizontal hula was all about, I routinely interpreted the phrase “making love” as refering to the physical act. That it could also refer to flirting/courting was something I had to figure out from context while watching old movies. I mean, _surely_ Griselda the Witch was not commanding Hubert Hawkins to march upstairs and **shag** the fair Princess Gwendolyn. Because if that’s what she meant, he left one or two things unfinished before his debonair moment of self-defenestration.
[WAG]
I’d venture to guess (based on my feeble memory of my paltry movie collection) that the phrase took on its new meaning somewhere in the mid-to-late 60s.
[/WAG]
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/7 "2007-01-02T21:16:17Z")
It’s hard to set an exact date, but the 60s sound right. But it had the meaning of “having sexual relations” a little earlier:
> [@OED](#):
>
> 1950 M. PEAKE Gormenghast xxix. 173 One of the Carvers made love to her and she had a baby.
Of course, even that example may have meant they were courting, not sexually involved.
This quote indicates the switch had been made:
[QUOTe=OED]
1967 B. WRIGHT tr. Queneau’s Between Blue & Blue xiv. 151 When you make love on a bunk,..the man has to bump his head.
[/quote]
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/8 "2007-01-02T21:22:25Z")
In Conan Doyle’s _Hound of the Baskervilles_ (c 1901), Sherlock Holmes remarks:
> [@](#):
>
> Sir Henry’s falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed.
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/9 "2007-01-02T21:49:45Z")
I wonder if that had anything to do with Sherlock Holmes constantly ejaculating all over Watson.
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### Author:  [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2007, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/10 "2007-01-02T22:23:05Z")
[QUOTE=Phase42]
Remember in one of the Chronicles of Narnia books, where C.S. Lewis describes little Lucy (the youngest child) going about the house making love to everybody?
[/QUOTE]
No, I definitely do **not** remember that, and I’d think it would have registered while I was listening to the unabridged series recently.
Care to give a cite on this one?
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### Author:  [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2007, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/11 "2007-01-03T17:55:37Z")
I know that as recently as _circa_ 1990, my grandmother used it in the old-fashioned sense. I was somewhat shocked to learn that my sister and her boyfriend were “upstairs making love”…
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### Author:  [@tashabot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tashabot)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2007, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/12 "2007-01-03T18:24:15Z")
My dad, ex-Hippy, says that when he was younger in the 50’s making love was used in place of “making out” and things like that, but in the 60’s the phrase “Make love, not war” became popular, and because Hippies were known for promiscuous sex, it became synonimous with “fuck like rabbits.”
He could be wrong. But that’s his take on it.
~Tasha
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### Author:  [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2007, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/13 "2007-01-03T18:44:42Z")
As late as 1960, Hollywood could make a movie titled _Let’s Make Love_ without having the title rejected by the Production Code as being too suggestive.
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### Author:  [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2007, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/14 "2007-01-03T18:55:34Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon]
I know that as recently as _circa_ 1990, my grandmother used it in the old-fashioned sense. I was somewhat shocked to learn that my sister and her boyfriend were “upstairs making love”…
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, it’s funny to hear those of a certain age use certain terms. I remember my mother-in-law remarking about the hickey she was getting on her leg. Of course, by “hickey,” she meant a pimple, but I pictured someone sucking on her leg.
It makes me wonder what phrases I might use now that make my nephews snicker.
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### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2007, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/15 "2007-01-03T22:22:35Z")
In about 1959, kids around our school were giggling about an elderly teacher who spoke of a literary couple “making love,” when she meant kissing and hugging. We knew the phrase to mean having sex, and she knew the older definition. Maybe this helps to locate the change.
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### Author:  [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2007, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/16 "2007-01-03T22:46:34Z")
[QUOTE=chrisk]
No, I definitely do **not** remember that, and I’d think it would have registered while I was listening to the unabridged series recently.
Care to give a cite on this one?
[/QUOTE]
Not Lucy. Jill Pole in _The Silver Chair_ when she is trying to butter up the giants in Harfang by being cute and adorable. The phrase “She made love to everyone” is used. If I could be bothered to traipse all the way upstairs, I could find you the reference.
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### Author:  [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2007, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-make-love-come-to-mean-engage-in-sexual-intercourse/386440/17 "2007-01-03T23:06:52Z")
[QUOTE=Malacandra]
Not Lucy. Jill Pole in _The Silver Chair_ when she is trying to butter up the giants in Harfang by being cute and adorable. The phrase “She made love to everyone” is used. If I could be bothered to traipse all the way upstairs, I could find you the reference.
[/QUOTE]
Hmm… well, I’m at the part where the owl is talking to Trumpkin for the first time, so I’ll pay attention at that part and see. 😃