exchange flesh

present singular third person exchanges flesh · participle present exchanging flesh · participle past exchanged flesh · past exchanged flesh

1. archaiceuphemisticidiomaticrareTo engage in sexual intercourse.

   […]it was thought ſhe was a Woman, and was turn'd into a cold fiſh, for ſhe wold not exchange fleſh with one that lou'd her: […]

   c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iv], page 293, column 2

   2 more examples

   [W]ill-she, nill-she, she must have Roger's company nightly in her bed, to ensure that he lay not with another. . . . To exchange flesh with Roger she would bid all the world defiance.

   1977, Jane Lane, A Secret Chronicle: Edward II (2002 House of Stratus reprint), page 140 (Google preview)

   She thinks to herself, What crime have I committed? If two people exchange flesh for money, why is it that only the one who contributes the flesh is a criminal and not the one who pays?

   1997, Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai, →ISBN, page 210

   Synonyms: copulate