Tongue kiss

A tongue kiss (or French kiss) is a romantic or sexual kiss that involves touching the tongue of one's partner with one's own tongue. Often this involves inserting one's tongue into one's partner's mouth, or vice versa. A tongue kiss is often called a "French kiss", and is also known as "tongue wrestling" and "tonsil hockey". In Britain this type of kissing is commonly known as "Snogging".

People engage in tongue kissing, rather than simple kissing on the lips, in order to maximize the pleasurable sensations involved with kissing, and to heighten the sense of physical intimacy. While kissing on the lips can be associated to non-romantic, non-sexual relationships (e.g. mother/son relationship), a tongue kiss is almost always (at least in Occidental cultures) of a sexual nature.

Older books sometimes refer to this as a 'Columbine kiss', i.e. after the manner of doves.