[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]

 

The expression love-bite designates: a playful bite on the skin from a lover; a kiss delivered with a sucking action, leaving a temporary mark on the skin, especially as a sexual act; a mark left on the skin by such a kiss.

This expression occurs, for example, in the following from World Bulletin, published in The Daily Telegraph (London, England) of Saturday 22^nd January 2011 [page 20, column 7]:

Woman suffers stroke after receiving love bite

A love bite caused a woman to have a minor stroke which partially paralysed her, doctors have disclosed.
The 44-year-old woman lost some movement in her left arm and went to the emergency department of Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand.
Doctors were puzzled about the cause of the stroke until they discovered a small bruise on her neck near a major artery.
She told them it was a love bite which she had received a few days earlier.
Dr Teddy Whu said the “physical trauma” of the bite caused a clot in the artery underneath, which dislodged and travelled to the woman’s heart, causing a stroke. She has recovered.

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expression love-bite that I have found:

1 & 2-: From Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (London: Printed for G. Fenton, 1749), by the English novelist John Cleland (1709-1789):

1-: [volume 2, page 63]:

We could observe the pleasure lighten in her eyes as he introduc’d its plenipotentiary instrument into her, till at length, having indulg’d her its utmost reach, its irritations grew so violent, and gave her the spurs so furiously, that collected within herself, and lost to every thing but the enjoyment of her favourite feelings, she retorted his thrusts with a just concert of springy heaves, keeping time so exactly with the most pathetic sighs, that one might have number’d the strokes in agitation by their distinct murmurs, whilst her active limbs kept wreathing and intertwisting with his in convulsive folds: Then the turtle-billing kisses, and the poignant painless love-bites, which they both exchang’d in a rage of delight, all conspiring towards the melting period; it soon came on, when Louisa, in the ravings of her pleasure-frensy, impotent of all restraint, cry’d out: “Oh Sir!—Good Sir!—pray do not spare me! ah! ah!—I can no more.”

2-: [volume 2, page 194]:

For his part, instinct-ridden as he was, the expressions of his animal passion partaking something of ferocity, were rather worryings than kisses, intermix’d with eager ravenous love-bites on her cheeks and neck; the prints of which did not wear out for some days after.

3-: From The Kisses of Joannes Secundus. Joannis Secundi Basia (London: J. Bew, 1779), by the Dutch neo-Latin poet Johannes Secundus (1510-1536), translated by the physician and classical scholar John Nott (1751-1825) [note on Basium 10 (i.e., Kiss 10), page 122]:

Lernutius * thus imitates this Passage of Secundus in his Book of Kisses:
[Latin text—translated as follows:]
While Show’rs of Kisses o’er each Sense prevail,
My vagrant Soul I’ll thro’ her Mouth exhale:
But poignant Love-Bites, and the nimble Tongue,
Shall the dear Wanderer recal [sic] ere long;
Then our twin Souls in Rapture wild we’ll blend,
As Lips with Lips sweet-kissing shall contend.

* The reference is to the Flemish poet Jan Leernout (1545-1619), whose Latinised name was Janus Lernutius.

4, 5 & 6-: From Belinda; Or, The Kisses of Joannes Bonefonius of Auvergne, Translated, and Accompanied with the original Latin (London: Printed for G. Kearsley, 1797), by the French poet Jean Bonnefons (1554-1614), translated by the physician and classical scholar John Nott (1751-1825):

4-: [Kiss 7. He will kiss her whether she will or no, page 57]:

Exquisite, bewitching fight!
Conflict fraught with all that’s sweet!
Poignant pleasure, keen delight,
When thy teeth in love-bites meet!

5-: [Kiss 31. He requests of Belinda that she would kiss him, and wishes that he may expire with her kissing, page 123]:

That thro’ the aperture our tongues may dart,
Safe from the peeping teeth’s white malice play,
And vibrate blissful thro’ the velvet way:
Let each encount’ring each delicious roll
In humid pleasure, thrilling to the soul:
Nor thy whole tongue urge in the fierce delight,
Its tip alone should first provoke the fight:
Inserted ’twixt my lips, let me suck thine;
’Twixt thine inserted, let thy mouth suck mine:
And when my teeth the poignant love-bite try,
Thine should return the painless poignancy.

6-: [The Vigil of Venus, page 137]:

One short-liv’d hour scarce wears away,
Than pinching she provokes fresh play,
And twitches, as I sleep, mine ear,
Feels sometimes there, and sometimes here,
Loads me with kisses many and oft,
And courts my lip with love-bites soft.