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Glite Dictionary
tonsil tennis

tonsil tennis

1 9.9
Kissing someone passionately with the tongue for a long time
  • noun
  • NSFW
translation icon : beso apasionado
  • He joked that he'd developed excellent reflexes from years of competitive tonsil tennis.

Examples

  • They were caught exchanging some rather energetic tonsil tennis after the party.

  • Stop with the tonsil tennis!

  • Onlookers could hardly ignore the couple's enthusiastic tonsil tennis in the corner of the café.

  • They were playing tonsil tennis at the party!

  • They seemed to be engaged in some serious tonsil tennis at the party, completely oblivious to everyone around them.

  • After a romantic dinner, they leaned in and started playing tonsil tennis under the stars.

  • The couple's tonsil tennis made everyone else at the café feel like they were intruding on a private moment.

Synonyms

tonsil hockey
vstonsil tennis
  • NSFW
1 9.9

A playful slang term for kissing with the tongue

emphasizes longer, more passionate mouth kissing rather than casual play
tonguing
vstonsil tennis
  • NSFW
8.5

Kissing someone using the tongue in a passionate way

is the slangy humorous term focusing on prolonged passionate kissing instead

Surface Forms

tonsil tennis singular
tonsil tennises plural

Morphology

tonsil + tennis

The compound plays a creative metaphor: 'tonsil' evokes the mouth/throat and 'tennis' evokes a back-and-forth game, so together they hint at repeated mouth/tongue contact. However the slang, playful metaphor and cultural knowledge required to map that image to 'passionate/prolonged kissing (tonguing)' makes the meaning only partially predictable for a B1 learner who knows the words.

Etymology

Tonsil tennis uses a funny picture: tonsil (part of the throat) and tennis (a game) make you imagine two people 'hitting' their tongues back and forth like a ball, so the phrase means 'passionate or long kissing, especially with tongues'.