by Nathan Bailey

This glossary should help you work out what all these acronyms and terms mean. If there isn't something here that you think should be, please email me and suggest it! Thanks.

• betrothal may mean that your parents select your partner, subject to your approval, or it may just mean courtship in the strictest sense, where there is no romance prior to the commitment to marriage.

• Embracing courtship is a commitment to romance only one man/woman in your life, and that is your spouse.

• erogenous is:
  1. (esp. of a part of the body) sensitive to sexual stimulation.
  2. giving rise to sexual desire or excitement.
  (from Concise Oxford Dictionary, 8th Ed., Copyright 1991 Oxford Univ. Press)

• petting is a nice Christian way of saying "mutual sexual arousal", ie. the touching of each others sexual/erogenous zones to arouse sexual desire that is usually unfulfilled. It's a kind of cheap sex without really having sex.