Precise Citation for Major Antedating of Euphemistic Sense of "Make Love"

[Shapiro, Fred]

make love (OED, s.v. love, n.1 P.3(b), 1927)



1883 _Kentucky Opinions_ 12: 21 (1915) [case of Clark v. Phillips]  As a defense to the action he pleaded that she was an unchaste woman, and the fact that she had given birth to an illegitimate child would have been sufficient to authorize the jury to find for him, unless it had been shown that the gratification of his own animal desires prompted him to make love to this confiding and unfortunate girl.

Fred Shapiro

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