Hickey

Hickey
Other names	Kiss mark, love bite, bug bite, love mark
Hickeys on the neck
Pronunciation	/ˈhɪki/ HIK-ee
Specialty	Dermatology
Duration	3–14 days
Causes	Suction on skin

A hickey, also known as love bite, is a bruise or bruise-like, dark red or purple mark caused by sucking or biting the skin of a person, usually their neck.¹ While biting may be part of giving a hickey, sucking is sufficient to burst small superficial blood vessels under the skin to produce bruising. A hickey is sometimes used to mark someone as being the target of a partner's romantic affection or as belonging to them. While mostly considered safe, there have been some reports of serious medical complications as a result of receiving hickeys, such as strokes, vascular² or nerve damage.³

In a looser definition, the fourth-century Hindu text Kama Sutra contains references to biting with relation to kissing.⁴

As a term, "Love bite" is first attested in 1749 in John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.⁵ The later term 'hickey', originally used in American English and still predominantly in that dialect, is of unclear etymology.⁶ Some sources suggests that it derives from the earlier meaning of "pimple, skin lesion" (c. 1915), itself perhaps a sense extension of "small gadget, device; any unspecified object" (1909).⁷