Are threesome & threeway different from each other? (2025)

My apology if i'm disrespecting the forum with such topic, but after all we are here to learn and English is intergral part of the science (language science).

the example is [ i was in a 3-way once]

can I replace it with threesome ? is anyone of the words slang or formal ? common or non-common? BE, AE, or even AUS. things like that.

Awaiting your replies,

I think they're both commonly used in the US. Maybe I shouldn't say "commonly" . . . when such things are discussed, I would think they would be about equally likely.

If you want a more formal term, use the one borrowed from the French: ménage a trois.

I agree with Egmont.

If you want a more formal term, use the one borrowed from the French: ménage a trois.

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I disagree with POB. This French phrase, which is well-known and common in English usage, doesn't describe a particular sexual encounter; it means a continuing relationship, the three (trois) people living together in the same household (ménage).

Parla said:

I agree with Egmont.

I disagree with POB. This French phrase, which is well-known and common in English usage, doesn't describe a particular sexual encounter; it means a continuing relationship, the three (trois) people living together in the same household (ménage).

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That's what it means in French. I've never heard it used that way in English, but then that situation is not something I've heard discussed much, so it may just be my limited experience.

Parla said:

I disagree with POB. This French phrase, which is well-known and common in English usage, doesn't describe a particular sexual encounter; it means a continuing relationship, the three (trois) people living together in the same household (ménage).

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I'm afraid the language mutates over time.
Katy Perry sings about the "menage a trois" she had "Last Friday Night."

I agree with Parla about ménage à trois: it's a relationship-cum-living-arrangement. Any other use of it is 'inexact', Katy Perry notwithstanding.

Katy who?

I wouldn't use the lyrics of Katy Perry songs as a guide to English.

I think popular culture and pop music can be very useful language learning tools and teaching aids.

Egmont said:

I agree also. I wouldn't use the lyrics of Katy Perry songs as a guide to English.

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While lyrics frequently have odd grammar, etc., I think they can be a rather good indicator of the popular meaning of words. If you think "menage a trois" is "inexact," you should try to discuss "ironic" with anyone under 40. I hope you're not insisting that words must have the meaning of their etymological origins.

I hope you're not insisting that words must have the meaning of their etymological origins.

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No. But Katy Perry (who?) aside, ménage a trois when used in English (which it has been for quite a while) has always referred, as Ewie says, to a living arrangement. Katy Perry's misuse shouldn't be our (or anyone's) guide.

Parla said:

No. But Katy Perry (who?) aside, ménage a trois when used in English (which it has been for quite a while) has always referred, as Ewie says, to a living arrangement. Katy Perry's misuse shouldn't be our (or anyone's) guide.

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By the time Katy Perry sings any collection of words, I'm sure they've been vetted and market-tested by hundreds of experts, who consider exactly what she should be saying and exactly how her audience will understand it. Everything is revised and considered to within an inch of its life, every word, sound, and turn of phrase. And her album Teenage Dream (on which this problematic use of "ménage à trois" appears) is one of the most successful records ever released in the history of pop music - whatever your particular feelings about it may be. So I think that a use of language on a Katy Perry song A) can't be reduced to a "simple" error on her part, or on the part of any other agent; and B) is reflective of the way that language is used by an immense mass of English-speakers.

So when Katy Perry sings " had a ménage à trois," it would indeed seem to indicate that "ménage à trois" can mean "a three-way sexual encounter" in today's English. Is that meaning literally correct? Maybe not. But is that meaning, even if it has shifted semantically, current in today's English? I'd say certainly.

lucas-sp said:

So when Katy Perry sings " had a ménage à trois," it would indeed seem to indicate that "ménage à trois" can mean "a three-way sexual encounter" in today's English.

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It could just as well mean, possibly, that a whole host of lyric-vetters/revisers/considerers, marketeers (and, presumably, marketees) and other 'experts' haven't a clue what ménage à trois means.

And I don't mean "what it means etymologically" means ['home of three people'], but "what it means to the majority of people who use it knowing what it means".

I'm all for pop music*; I used to think it was pretty much the be-all-and-end-all of human existence myself; but ... well, it's not language-as-we-know-it, Jim, is it?

*Well, kind of.