intercourse

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English entercours, also intercurse,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French entrecours (“exchange, commerce”),^{[4][5][6][7][8]} from entrecorre (“to run between”),^[4][9] from Latin intercurrō (“to run between, intervene”).^[4][5][6] The Latin verb is from inter (“between”) and currō (“to run”),^[5][10][6] from Proto-Indo-European *kers- (“to run”).^[5][10] The Latin noun intercursus (“a running between, intervention”) meant communication and trading in Medieval Latin,^[3][11] and Merriam-Webster takes the Middle English form intercurse as the French word remodelled after the Latin prefix inter-.^[12][8] The Anglo-Norman form is recorded from 1403, for dealings and trade between peoples.^[13] Barnhart notes that the form with i- became the established one in the 1700s.^[14] It is related to course and current.^[6][15][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Trade or traffic in goods, commercial dealings between countries: in 1449, in the phrase entercourse of merchaundise, in the Proceedings of the Privy Council.^[2][14][5] The OED dates its first record to 1473.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The word first named dealings between countries, at first only trade; from 1557 it was also used of social communication and dealings between individuals.^[4][14][5] From 1561 it was also used of communion between people and the spiritual or unseen.^[4][5] Johnson (1755) defined it as "commerce; exchange" and "communication".^[16] Several 16th- and 17th-century uses died out: conversation or discussion, intercommunication between things, a passage or entrance, alternation and intervention.^[4] The sexual sense is first recorded in Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (1798, the OED citing the 1803 edition);^[14][4] Etymonline takes it as a shortening of the euphemism sexual intercourse, recorded by 1771, and finds the sexual implication perhaps in the early 18th century, though hard to tell apart from the social sense.^[5] The Oxford Dictionary of English dates the specifically sexual use to the late 18th century.^[17]

Timeline

• 1449 – entercourse of merchaundise, trade between nations.^[2][14]
• 1557 – social communication between individuals.^[4]
• 1561 – communion with the spiritual or unseen.^[4]
• 1596 – conversation, discussion (obsolete by 1692).^[4]
• 1626 – intercommunication between things or parts (obsolete by 1787).^[4]
• 1771 – sexual intercourse, according to Etymonline.^[5]
• 1798 – sexual relations, in Malthus.^[14][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Communication or dealings between people, groups or nations: the growing intercourse between the two ports.^[11][12][4]
2. Sexual intercourse: sexual relations, coitus.^[11][10][4]
3. An exchange of thoughts and feelings; communion, especially with the spiritual.^[12][4]

Word family

• nonintercourse
• preintercourse

Related words

• course
• current
• incursion
• intercur

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
14. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
15. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press