Posted on 2014.07.09
The term ‘French kissing’ was brought to North America by soldiers returning
home from Word War I. The French were known for their more adventurous love-
making and passionate kissing, so the men returning from fighting over seas
would kiss their girls back home with fiery French passion and tell them it was
a “French kiss.” At one point in time, this act was also known as a ‘Florentine
kiss’.
Until recently, the French didn’t have a name for their own kiss. In
France “French kissing” was described with expressions, like “kissing with
tongues” or “kissing at length in the mouth”, but they never had a single-word
for it. It wasn’t until last year that the word ‘galocher’ was officially written in a
French dictionary to describe a passionate kiss. Galocher used to be French
slang for kissing with tongues, but the word its self actually describes the noise
that galoshes make when they’re wet – effectively making the French word for
making-out a bit tongue-in-cheek (pun fully intended) as kissing this way can be
a bit sloppy and noisy.
