MovieChat Forums > Dishonored Lady (1947) Discussion > Make Love

Make Love

posted 8 years ago by p25735-261-505738
2 replies | jump to latest

The term, "Make love", now means sex, but in movies from this period and older, I've heard it mean wooing/romancing. However, in the courtroom scene, the prosecutor asks Madeleine if she made love to Courtland, and she says yes. Did he mean whether she had sex with him? If so, then did the term start out as euphemism, because they couldn't say sex in the movies, and eventually came to mean sex?

[–] shanehaynes 8 years ago

I've seen several movies from the "golden age" of film (40s-50s) where the term "make love" seemed to mean romance "Mildred Pierce" comes to mind.

[–] toshguy 7 years ago

Check out this article:

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/12/making-love.html

And specifically this part of it:

The dictionary’s first written example of this usage is from Sex, a 1927 play by Mae West: “Jimmy embraces Margie LaMont and goes through with her the business of making love to her by lying on top of her on a couch, each embracing the other.” (The OED citation is from a 1997 collection of Mae West plays edited by Lillian Schlissel.)

We’ll end with an example from George Orwell’s 1934 novel Burmese Days: “Why is master always so angry with me when he has made love to me?”

The Mae West example seems dubious to me, as it could be interpreted that "goes through with her the business of making love to her by lying on top of her on a couch, each embracing the other" likely entails nothing more than just cuddling and kissing on a couch. The last example, on the other hand, seems to show that the sexual meaning was already in use at the time this movie was made.

I'm here, Mr. Man, I cannot tell no lie and I'll be right here till the day I die