Making out
Making out
!A couple making out
Making out
Making out is a term of American origin dating back to at least 1949, and is used to refer to kissing, including extended French kissing or necking (heavy kissing of the neck, and above), or to acts of non-penetrative sex such as heavy petting ("intimate contact, just short of sexual intercourse"). Equivalent terms in other dialects include the British English getting off and the Hiberno-English shifting. When performed in a stationary vehicle, it has been euphemistically referred to as parking, coinciding with American car culture.
History
The sexual connotations of the phrase "make out" appear to have developed in the 1930s and 1940s from the phrase's other meaning: "to succeed". Originally, it meant "to seduce" or "to have sexual intercourse".
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