copulate
/ˈkɒpjʊleɪt
/verb [no object]
Have sexual intercourse: only the dominant male copulates with the female after about twenty minutes, they copulate again...
- Males typically respond to persistent female sexual initiation by mounting and copulating with the female.
- As adults, men look at porn because they are, ‘unnaturally’ one might say, hormonally driven to copulate with multiple partners but unable to do so.
- So if we have one man and one woman who copulate in the standard way, and not in any kind of other way that we find troubling, then they can raise children.
Synonyms
mate, couple, breed;
have sex, have sexual intercourse, make love, sleep together, go to bed
informal do it, do the business, go all the way, make whoopee, have one's way, bed, know someone in the biblical sense, tumble
British informal bonk, get one's oats
North American informal boff, get it on
euphemistic be intimate
vulgar slang fuck, screw, bang, lay, get one's leg over, shaft, dick, frig, do, have, hump, poke, shtup, dip one's wick, ride, service, tup
British vulgar slang have it away, have it off, shag, knob, get one's end away, knock someone off, give someone one, roger, grind, stuff
Scottish vulgar slang podger
North American vulgar slang ball, jump, jump someone's bones, bone, pork, diddle, nail
Australian/New Zealand vulgar slang root
formal fornicate with
archaic lie together, possess, swive, know
Derivatives
copulatory
- The penis serves as an outlet for urine and semen and as a copulatory organ.
- Throughout the study period, all mounting behavior and complete copulatory sequences (those involving intromission and ejaculation) were recorded during critical incident sampling.
- For each male, we used the number of observed copulations as an estimate of his total copulatory success.
Origin
Late Middle English (in the sense 'join'): from Latin copulat- 'fastened together', from the verb copulare, from copula (see copula).
couple from Middle English:
This comes via Old French from Latin copulare formed from co- ‘together’ and apere ‘fasten’. The term couplet (late 16th century) used in poetry for a pair of successive (usually rhyming) lines, means literally ‘little pair’. Copulate (Late Middle English) at first meant ‘join’ and is from the same source.