Rouler un patin

Meaning: To kiss deeply, with tongue.

Language: French

Literally: To roll a skate

Example: “Sur le quai de la gare, les deux amoureux se roulaient un patin.” — On the station platform, the two lovebirds were swapping spit.

English equivalent: To swap spit

Category: Body & Senses

Origin: Rouler transitively means to move a thing by turning it over on itself, which accounts well enough for the verb. The TLFi, citing Esnault, has the first attestation in 1927, though it only spread after the Second World War. The patin is harder. Some read it as a deformation of patte in its old sense of a rag — as in pattemouille — standing in for the tongue, except that this sense of patte had fallen out of use by the middle of the 19th century, well before the phrase existed. More likely it is the noun taken from the verb patiner, which Cellard and Rey record in early 20th-century slang meaning to caress a partner somewhere sensitive. Roller skates being in vogue at the same moment will not have hurt. Galoche is slang for a shoe, an object in close contact with the floor-polishing patin, so the substitution is the same joke; pelle, saucisse and escalope also turn up, with no explanation at all.