a1500 (?c1450) Merlin 87 (MED) Vlfyn is som-what a-quytte of the synne that he hadde in the love makinge.

1625 F. Bacon Ess. (new ed.) 3 The Inquirie of Truth, which is the Loue-making, or Wooing of it.

1631 B. Jonson New Inne sig. (*)6 Lovel..hauing two houres assigned him, of free colloquy, and loue-making to his Mistresse.

a1689 A. Behn Widdow Ranter (1690) ii. ii. 18 I bar Love-making within my Territories.

1726 T. Southerne Money the Mistress v. ii. 61 She moreover calls that Love-making, Teazing.

1781 M. P. Andrews Dissipation i. iii. 12 I hope you don't mean to set up at your time of life in the business of love-making.

1829 E. Bulwer-Lytton Devereux I. ii. ii. 166 Looking round that mart of millinery and love-making, which, so celebrated in the reign of Charles II., still preserved the shadow of its old renown in that of Anne.

1830 T. Moore Mem. (1854) VI. 135 My sweet Bess and I recollected the time when we used, in our love-making days, to stroll for hours there together.

1834 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus ii. ix. 68/1 The whole Borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries.

1883 Cent. Mag. Feb. 513/1 They both glanced at the intruder, and exchanged smiles, apparently of pity for his indecency, and then went on with their love-making.

1950 Jrnl. Internat. Folk Music Council 2 16 Naturally also in this type of dance..there is bound to be a certain amount of love-making or incipient courtship.

1998 D. Wu Compan. to Romanticism xlv. 457 The difference between a private understanding (such as Willoughby's lovemaking to Marianne) and a formal proposal that would constitute a public engagement.

1927 A. Huxley Proper Stud. 245 [Anatole] France found it reasonable to regard sex as a simple physiological function and love-making as scarcely more than a medicinable act of purging.

1953 Marriage & Family Living 15 346/1 Women..tell me that..it gives added zest and pleasure if during the lovemaking their husbands embrace them tightly during the climax.

1963 A. Heron Towards Quaker View of Sex 65 ‘Frigidity’..implies more than failure to have orgasm: it is the inability to enjoy love-making and penetration.

2003 Marie Claire Dec. 130/1 In-love lovemaking can be the best and most earth-shattering kind of sex, but it is no guarantee of great sex.

?1615 G. Chapman tr. Homer Odysses (new ed.) xiii. 208 The earth shall ouergo Some one at least, of these Loue-making men.

1773 D. Garrick Let. 17 June (1963) II. 875 I have been oblig'd to resign all the Love-making, Ravishing Heroes..in the Dramatic Personæ.

1793 C. Smith Old Manor House II. iii. 68 The marvellously fine speeches he studies would seem like love-making speeches.

1819 J. K. Paulding Lay of Sc. Fiddle v. 135 Little reck'd I of thy tones so clear, That scare love making Catlings far away.

1868 R. Browning Ring & Bk. II. vi. 227 I..bear no more love-making devils: hence!

1907 R. Muther Hist. Mod. Painting II. xx. 173 A sly old fox with a furrowed, rubicund visage and huge ears, who roves about more to the terror of love-making couples than of poachers.

1963 A. Heron Towards Quaker View of Sex 66 Ignorance of lovemaking technique.

2004 Times (Nexis) 17 Jan. (Weekend Review section) 5 Proust's favourite thing was to spy through a specially drilled hole on other love-making men.