Making out  Making out is a term of American origin dating back to at least 1949, and is used to refer to kissing, including extended French kissing or heavy kissing of the neck (called "necking"), or to acts of non-penetrative sex such as heavy petting. Equivalent terms in other dialects include the British English getting off and the Hiberno-English shifting. When performed in a stationary vehicle, it has been euphemistically referred to as "parking", coinciding with American car culture. The sexual connotations of the phrase "make out" appear to have developed in the 1930s and '40s from the phrase's other meaning: "to succeed". Originally it meant "to seduce" or "to have sexual intercourse". Studies indicate that at the beginning of the 20th century, premarital sex increased, and with it, petting behavior in the '20s. The Continental zeitgeist is amusingly illustrated by a letter that Freud wrote to Sándor Ferenczi in '31, playfully admonishing him to stop "kissing" his patients; Freud warned him lest "a number of independent thinkers in matters of technique will say to themselves: Why stop at a kiss? Certainly one gets further when one adopts 'pawing' as well, which, after all, doesn't make a baby. And then bolder ones will come along who will go further, to peeping and showing – and soon we shall have accepted in the technique of analysis the whole repertoire of "demi-viergerie" and petting parties". By the postwar period, necking and petting became accepted behavior in mainstream American culture as long as the partners were dating. A 1956 study defined "necking" as "kissing and light caressing above the neck" and "petting" as "more intimate contact with the erogenous zones, short of sexual intercourse". Alfred Kinsey's definition of "petting" was "deliberately touching body parts above or below the waist", compared to "necking" which only involved general body contact. Making out is usually considered an expression of romantic affection or sexual attraction. An episode of making out is frequently referred to as a "make-out session" or simply "making out," depending on the speaker's vernacular. It covers a wide range of sexual behavior, and means different things to different age groups in different parts of the United States. It typically refers to kissing, including prolonged, passionate, open-mouth kissing (also known as French kissing), and intimate skin-to-skin contact.