intercourse
Americannoun
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intercourses
plural
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sexual intercourse, especially coitus.
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dealings or communication between individuals, groups, countries, etc.
- Synonyms:
- traffic, trade, commerce, sexual relations, sex act, sex, relations, copulation
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interchange of thoughts, feelings, etc.
noun
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communication or exchange between individuals; mutual dealings
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of intercourse
First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English intercurse, from Medieval Latin intercursus “communication, trading,” Latin “a running between, interposition”; see inter-, course
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
That meant LGBTQ+ and single people who historically had been shut out by definitions of infertility as a failure to conceive after six to 12 months of unprotected heterosexual intercourse.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 27, 2026
These two were having intercourse, in the old-fashioned sense of the word.
From Salon ● Feb. 9, 2025
From dawn to dusk, observant Muslims the world over will refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and sexual intercourse.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 10, 2024
As he warned, the “logical consequences of … a decision which elevates commercial intercourse … to the same plane as has been previously reserved for the free marketplace of ideas, are far reaching indeed.”
From Slate ● Nov. 2, 2023
“Should our whole intercourse consist of an exchange of compliments? Ma foil”.
From "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin
As she frankly admitted, she had rather fallen back on Edith, finding her, after many experiments, the most agreeable of friends, chiefly because in their intercourses everything was always taken for granted.
From Love's Shadow by Ada Leverson
Here he spent the rest of days in devotional exercises in friendly intercourses with other Sufis and in religious instruction of the young.
From Mystics and Saints of Islam by Claud Field
Our class distinctions, our artificial intercourses, our hypocritical professions, our deference for externals,—are they not the flimsiest pretences that ever were fashioned?
From A Day's Ride A Life's Romance by Charles James Lever
Milton was a stern man, and as he was so much devoted to study, he was perhaps too negligent in those endearments and tender intercourses of love which a wife has a right to expect.
From The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume II by Theophilus Cibber
An observer who can also speculate,—one who looks before and after,—will conclude that, amidst some evil, the change is advantageous; and that good must, on the whole, arise from enlarged intercourses between men and societies.
From How to Observe Morals and Manners by Harriet Martineau
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
