A hickey, often referred to as a love bite in British English and specialised use, is a bruise or bruise-like mark caused by biting or sucking the skin of a person, usually on their neck, arm, or earlobe.[citation needed] While biting may be part of giving a hickey, sucking is sufficient to burst small superficial blood vessels under the skin to produce bruising. A hickey is sometimes used to mark someone as being the target of a partner's romantic affection or as belonging to them.
In a looser definition, the fourth-century Hindu text Kama Sutra contains references to biting with relation to kissing.[1] "Love bite" as a term is first attested in 1749 in John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.[2] The later term 'hickey', originally used in American English and still predominantly in that dialect, is of unclear etymology.[3] Some sources suggests that it derives from the earlier meaning of "pimple, skin lesion" (c.1915), itself perhaps a sense extension of "small gadget, device; any unspecified object" (1909).[4]
References
↑Vatsyayana (1883). "Part II, Chapter V: On Biting". Kama Sutra. Translated by Burton, Richard Francis. p.46. Archived from the original on 2025-07-02. Retrieved 2025-07-02.
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