Page:The art of kissing (IA artofkissing987wood).djvu/8

6 that Paradise of osculation, to distant Lapland, the only spot in Europe where kissing is not known. Osculation, the more highbrow word, has a prettier parentage, coming from the Latin osculari, to kiss, which developed from Latin osculum, a little mouth, the pretty mouth, this being the diminutive of os, mouth. Smack, defined as "a kiss, especially in a coarse or noisy manner," is akin to the German schmatzen and schmacken, to knock, or to smack the lips. Salute, the courtly word for kiss, comes from the Latin salus, safety, which grew out of salvus, from which we get salvation, and also a salvo of guns. Here we must quarrel with the word's parents: a kiss does not, as a rule, spell safety—it should rather be a glorious peril; the salvation it brings is at least not of the religious kind; and, if it sounds like a salvo of guns, we should ask the lady to put on a Maxim silencer thereafter, in order to avoid waking the neighbors.

So much for the family tree of kissing. As to its meaning, the dictionary says that a kiss is "a salute or caress, given with the lips." What an incredible understatement! Imagine a drowning man describing a life-buoy as a floating contrivance stuffed with cork! We much prefer Sam Slick's definition or description, that a kiss is like creation, because it is made out of nothing, and is very good. An old poet came closer than the dictionary, when he wrote: