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stranger
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stranger
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What is the origin of this phrase and has the meaning changed over the years. Make love to me seemed to be a phrase often used in songs of the forties and fifties.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
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Well--I was born in '53, so I can't speak to those songs. As far as my knowledge goes, it was popularized in the "Make Love Not War" slogan from the 60's.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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About the origin: link - make link - love Take make and love and blend the two etymologies thoroughly and you will have a whole bunch of aspects as to the meaning of make love through time. (this one is pretty too: ( also from online Ety..) make (n.) "match, mate, companion" (now archaic or dial.), from O.E. gemaca, from P.Gmc. *gamakon-, related to gemęca "one of a pair, mate, consort," gemęcc "well-matched, suitable," macian "to make" (see make (v.)
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I think (memories of very old novels without actually checking anything) that the phrase used to refer to the whole range of wooing and courting activities. It is only more recently that it has come to mean almost exclusively intercourse.
Hmmm, that might be a more societal than linguistic change .
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yes, you're right:"Phrase make love is attested from 1580 in the sense "pay amorous attention to. As a euphemism for "have sex," it is attested from c.1950" Didn't know the phrase was that old. So for almost 400 years it wasn't that specific.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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They hadn't invented sex yet - they were too busy looking at ankles. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Or either they din't need no stinking euphemisms.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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no stinking euphemisms
They probably had different euphemisms. Speaking of which, my favorite euphemism is faeces for 'shit'. In Latin as the Romans spoke it, there were two words, merda (whence the Romance words) and stercus. In the Middle Ages, some medical person started using faeces, the plural of faex, which means 'dregs, lees' as a euphemism for 'shit'. Excrementum was another one, but an older one; in Latin it could refer to anything expelled from the body, like 'snot'.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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