Learn English – What did ‘make love’ mean in the ’60s

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Nowadays (in the States, anyway) to make love means only "to engage in sexual intercourse with both parties willing" (or perhaps also the similar "to engage in sexual fondling with both parties willing"). In the mid- and late 1960s, when the slogan "make love, not war" was popular (among a certain class of people), what did to make love mean in the States (not only in that slogan)?

  • Did it have the same (sexual) meaning?
  • Did it have the now-obsolete meaning of "to woo"?
  • Did it have both meanings, so was ambiguous?
  • Did it have no popular meaning at all (so that, in the slogan, it'd be viewed simply as the counterpart to to make war and thus as meaning something like "to foster agape")?
  • Or what?

Best Answer

  • It had the first meaning in that context;
  • it could have the second meaning in other contexts;
  • in yet other contexts it was useful to leave it ambiguous;
  • it's pretty much always meant both those things, so No; although this context undoubtedly confounded, deliberately, eros and agape;
  • I don't remember any other meanings, but we were mostly pretty drugged up at the time.
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