Definition
Until the 1950s, the term "pre-marital sex" referred to sexual relations between two people prior to marrying each other. During that period, Western societies expected that men and women marry by the age of 21 or 22; as such, there were no considerations that one who had sex would not marry. The term was used instead of fornication, due to the negative connotations of the latter.
The meaning has since shifted, referring to all sexual relations a person has prior to marriage; this removes emphasis on who the relations are with. The definition has a degree of ambiguity. It is not clear whether sex between individuals legally forbidden from marrying, or the sexual relations of one uninterested in marrying could be considered premarital.
Alternative terms for pre-marital sex have been suggested, including non-marital sex (which overlaps with adultery), youthful sex, adolescent sex, and young-adult sex. These terms also suffer from a degree of ambiguity, as the definition of having sex differs from person to person.
Read more about this topic: Premarital Sex
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“I’m beginning to think that the proper definition of “Man” is “an animal that writes letters.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)
“... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)