If you’re new to swinging, or even if you’re a longtime swinger, you may sometimes feel like you need a swinger dictionary to explain all the swinger terms.
Voila! Your wish is my command.
Swinger terms don’t have to be confusing, intimidating or strange. They evolved in order to quickly and clearly communicate lifestyle and situational ideas that are specific to swingers.
Understanding swinger terms will help you understand important, swinger-specific information from like-minded people swiftly and easily, and it will help you get your point across to those who need to know.
Read: Swinger Code Signs and Symbols You Should Know
34 Swinger Terms Explained
Use this handy glossary to bone up on your swinger terminology!
1. Clean
Someone who describes themselves as “clean” means they do not (or claim not to) have any STIs to worry about. Someone may describe someone else as “clean” and this is what they’re talking about.
Read: Safe Sex Practices for Those With Mulitiple Partners
2. Closed Door / Closed Swinging
When swinger sex takes place in separate rooms, with the doors closed. In other words, your partner is off having sex with their new partner, behind a closed door.
3. Closet Swinger
You may notice that in some swinger profiles, neither party in the couple shows their face in pictures. They don’t use their real names. Like folks of any sexuality, swingers can be “in the closet” and not public about their lifestyle.
Closet swingers have their reasons, even if you don’t agree or share them. They may not be socially supported, fear losing their jobs, or harming their family, by social expectations of monogamy.
Read: Swinger Relationship Basics: What to Know
4. Consent
Consent is a very important term in polyamory, swinging, kink, BDSM, and all kinds of sexy lifestyles. It’s the bedrock core value of non-monogamous or kinky lifestyles.
No matter how open or experienced someone is, they may choose “no” at any time, for a particular act, or with someone specific.
5. Compersion
Compersion is a swinger term from the polyamory community, and it refers to the feeling of pleasure and joy you ideally get when your partner is having great sex with someone else.
Non-monogamous lovers strive for compersion. It is a goal. It is also a choice—you are choosing to feel compersion for someone rather than to limit them or control their freedom and pleasure.
Read: How to Practice Compersion
6. Discretion
Discretion is expected and implied in the swinger lifestyle. Discretion means you don’t talk about who you saw, who you did, and the nitty gritty details of their body, love style, or who they fancy and what they want in bed.
Read: 5 Levels of Discretion in Polyamory
7. Exclusive
To guarantee safe sex, discretion, and trust, some swingers form an exclusive group. The couples who are part of that group swing, but they don’t swing outside.
8. Fluid Bonded
Lovers who are fluid bonded don’t protect against the exchange of sexual fluids. A couple for example may have sex with each other without a condom, but always use safe sex when swinging.
Read: Fluid Bonding for Intimacy and Pleasure
9. Full Swap
A full swap means “going all the way” or having penetrative sex. A soft swap means swingers don’t, or don’t in that circumstance have intercourse, but are open to a variety of other kinds of sex.
10. Group Room
A group room in swinger terminology is a room for group sex or for multiple couples to engage in sex. There might be sex chains, or people petting and playing with various partners, or separate huddles of couples enjoying each other.
Read: 7 Types of Group Sex
11. Hall Pass
A “hall pass” is when someone’s wife or girlfriend allows them to seek sex with someone else.
Read: A Guide to Open Relationship Rules
12. Host
A host in swinger terms is someone hosting the swinger sex party.
Read: How to Host a Successful Swingers Party
13. House Party
A house party is a private swinger party at someone’s house, rather than a nightclub or sex club or other public space.
Read: How to Find Swinger Parties Near You
14. Key Party
A key party is a kind of raffle. Real keys are sometimes used, and prospective lovers pull a key out of a container. Whoever owns the key becomes their lover. A key party may just pull names or use an app to pair people up.
Read: Key Parties and Why Swingers Aren’t into Them
15. The Lifestyle
Traditionally considered a classier description than “swinging,” some folks prefer the term “The Lifestyle” to describe their non-monogamous social preferences.
Others use “The Lifestyle” as a euphemism when talking about swingers. This term has also been used for polyamory, BDSM, and other sexual lifestyles, so it is not swinger specific.
Read: Swinger Lifestyle 101: All About Swingers
16. NSA
No strings attached, meaning no other involvement is necessary beyond sex or the encounter at hand.
17. Newcomer / Newbie
A new swinger.
Read: How to Be Swingers: A Guide for Swinging Beginners
18. Off-Premise, On-Premise
These swinger terms describes whether sex takes place on-site at a swinger event, or somewhere else.
19. Open Door / Open Swinging
When a couple leaves a door open during sex, they may be open to including their primary partners in the tryst.
Read: Foursome Positions for Kinky Couples
20. Orgy
An orgy is group sex, usually among five or more people.
Read: How to Have an Orgy
21. Partner Swapping
When swingers swap partners, two couples mix it up.
22. Parallel Play
When swinger couples enjoy having sex together in the same room, but don’t sexually interact with the other couple, it is a swinger term called “parallel play.”
23. Party Clothes
Comfortable, versatile, sexy clothing such as lingerie, robes, and loungewear for swinging parties.
Read: Swinger Clothing: What to Wear at a Swingers Party
24. Safe / V Safe
Some men have had or claim to have had a vasectomy and are thus “safe” in theory from danger of impregnating other swingers.
25. Single Swinger
Some people want to swing but don’t have a partner at this time. Single swingers often show up at swinger parties, hoping to be a unicorn rather than evicted from the event.
Read: How to Find Swinger Couples
26. Social
A swinger social could be anything from a dance to a brunch where swingers get together to mingle or enjoy the best local pancakes. Swinging itself does not take place at a social.
Some socials are followed by swinger parties for those who want to go on.
27. Soft Swap
Soft swapping is swinger vocabulary for sex that does not include intercourse.
Read: A Guide to Soft Swinging and Soft Swaps
28. Soft Swingers
Soft swingers are swingers who only seek non-penetrative sex with new lovers. They reserve intercourse sex for their primary relationship.
29. SRS (Same Room Sex)
Swinging in the same room.
30. Ticket
Since most swinger clubs are for couples, a single man who wants to swing may hire a female escort to pose as his girlfriend. This is not approved of, as swinging is social, not just about sex. The escort is called a “ticket.”
31. Unicorn
A single woman who wants NSA sex with a couple is a unicorn.
Read: How To Find a Unicorn for a Couple
32. Vanilla
Vanilla in swinger terms means someone who does not swing.
33. Voyeur
A voyeur likes to watch other swingers in action.
Read: Swingers and Voyeurism: How to Be a Swinger Voyeur
34. Versatile
In the context of swinger terms, versatile means someone who is bisexual.
Read: Where To Meet Bisexual Women Online
What swinger terms apply to your lifestyle or swinging play?
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