In TIME for Feb.17 review of William Boyd's "Any Human Heart" the reviewer says "....in what
amounts to literary incest, Mounstuart indulges in a brief snog with Waugh himself."

I found a page on BBC news that uses "snog" as a teenage term for osculation. Somehow that
doesn't seem to fit the use in the book review.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1443007.stm#map

Comments, please. Bonzaialsatian, where are you when I need you?
Or dodyskin, who has been neglecting us for too long.

While familiar with "snog", and happy with its use in the snippet you provided, I'm much more interested in the word "Brotosj" - please elucidate.

Dear sjm: Typos get away from me much easier than they used to. I can check them only
out of corner of my left eye. Somehow I have difficulty imagining two male superegotists
"swapping spit". Even if one of them is fictitious.

I've always known the word snog as slang for (quoting from the site) Kissing with all the trimmings - except dribble., though in the stories I've heard it's always dribble included .
I was a bit suprised about the British origin though - for some reason I'd always thought that 'snog' came from the US.

Another thing: fringe is slang? I'm confused.

> Somehow I have difficulty imagining two male superegotists
"swapping spit".

Perhaps your oversight was that its use in the text is in a purely metaphorical sense intended to be witty. Of course 'snog' might just be a type-o fir 'song' ;-)

Rather than snog, I've always, as an Australian born English speaker, liked 'to pash (on)'.

From one OldTimer to another : snog = smooch = "making out."
And a Big Smooch to you, you ol' devil!

Snog is, as far as I know, purely British in origin. As BY points out, the antipodes have their own cultivars, as do the USns.

- Pfranz

From one OldTimer to another : snog = smooch = "making out."

That's correct. It has always seemed to me to have an unpleasant sound for what should be a pleasant enough occupation. Teenagers enjoy doing that with the words they invent, I think. I guess its a form of rhetoric, is there a word for it?

:Understatement is both UK and US disinclination "to shoot sparrows with a cannon". So
it is an extension of understatement to use a seemingly derogatory term rather than a
mawkish conventional term.

an extension of understatement to use a seemingly derogatory term

See also swap spit.

And the likewise descriptive suck face