love bite
UK/ˈlʌv baɪt/
love bite noun: a bruise on the skin caused by someone sucking or biting it, usually with sexual intent.
Noun
love bite (plural love bites)
- A bruise on the skin caused by someone sucking or biting it, usually with sexual intent.
- 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 period1749, [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
- And when my teeth the poignant love-bite try, / Thine should return the painless poignancy.1797, Jean Bonnefons, Belinda; or, The Kisses of Joannes Bonefonius of Auvergne, London: G[eorge] Kearsley, s. XXXI (in imitation of Secundus's Basia), page 123
- Synonyms:
- hickey, monkey bite
Examples of love bite in a sentence
- […] 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.1917 April, Jack London, Jerry of the Islands, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC:
- You ever notice the bloody big love bites on some of those sheilas that work in the Store?’1982, Paul Radley, My Blue-Checker Corker and Me, Sydney: Fontana/Collins, page 70:
- Easy girls and late nights / Cigarettes and love bites / Why do you have to be so cruel?1983, “Bad Boys”, in Fantastic, performed by Wham!:
Synonyms of love bite
Forms of love bite
| plural | love bites |
|---|---|
| alternative form | lovebite |
| alternative form | love-bite |
Questions about love bite
- What does love bite mean?
- Love bite means a bruise on the skin caused by someone sucking or biting it, usually with sexual intent.
- How do you use love bite in a sentence?
- […] 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.
- What part of speech is love bite?
- Love bite is a noun.
- How do you pronounce love bite?
- Love bite is pronounced /ˈlʌv baɪt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of love bite?
- The plural of love bite is love bites.
Words near love bite in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: love bite (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-love bite.wav.
Cite this entry: “love bite.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/love_bite. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.