love bite

• lovebite, love-bite

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈlʌv baɪt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

love bite (plural love bites)

1. (chiefly British) A bruise on the skin caused by someone sucking or biting it, usually with sexual intent.

   Synonyms: (US) hickey, monkey bite

   • 1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the Second]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume II, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, page 63:

     Then the turtle-billing kisses, and the poignant painless love bites, which they both exchang'd in a rage of delight, all conspiring towards the melting period

   • 1797, Jean Bonnefons, Belinda; or, The Kisses of Joannes Bonefonius of Auvergne‎^[1], London: G[eorge] Kearsley, s. XXXI (in imitation of Secundus's Basia), page 123:

     And when my teeth the poignant love-bite try, / Thine should return the painless poignancy.

   • 1917 April, Jack London, Jerry of the Islands, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC:

     […] with first a scarlet slash of tongue to cheek, he seized her hand between his teeth and dented the soft skin with a love bite that did not hurt.

   • 1982, Paul Radley, My Blue-Checker Corker and Me, Sydney: Fontana/Collins, page 70:

     ‘Gee! You ever notice the bloody big love bites on some of those sheilas that work in the Store?’

   • 1983, “Bad Boys”, in Fantastic, performed by Wham!:

     Easy girls and late nights / Cigarettes and love bites / Why do you have to be so cruel?

• belovite