Load
A man's cum, the amount he shoots in one go: you shoot a load, blow a load, take a load or swallow one.
A load is a man's cum, specifically the amount he shoots in one go. You shoot a load, blow your load, take a load, swallow a load, and on the apps you might be "looking for loads" or proud of a "big load." It is one of the oldest and plainest words in gay sex talk, and one of the most used.
It is not gay slang in origin, straight men have been shooting loads for a century, but gay men have made it their own, with a whole economy of loads built around it: counted, collected, traded and praised.
Where it comes from
The idea is simple: the balls carry a load, and at the end of sex they deliver it. Green's Dictionary of Slang finds "shot a pretty healthy load" in an American letter from around 1915, and "shoot one's load" in bawdy verse even earlier. Other versions followed: blow one's load by 1970, pop one's load by 1969. Shoot one's load also took a figurative sense, to give it everything you've got, by 1950.
How it is used today
On the apps, load is everywhere. "Load" in a message usually means the sender wants to cum or wants your cum, and the context tells you where. Bottoms who collect them may count them: "took six loads last night" is a boast in some corners and a horror story in others. A man who wants as many as possible is a cum dump; a top who finishes inside without a condom is breeding; and a load swapped mouth to mouth is snowballing.
Size matters to some. "Big load" is a compliment in porn and a selling point in profiles, and some men are fascinated by volume the way a size queen is fascinated by length.
In porn
In porn, the load is the finale. The money shot is the moment it is delivered on camera, and studios once insisted on visible external cumshots, partly so the audience could see it happen. Bareback porn shifted the focus to loads delivered inside, which is why creampie scenes, and their close-ups, became their own genre. A facial is the load aimed at the face instead.
Load is also the root of a whole set of gay compound words on hookup sites: load-taker, load-giver, loadhunter. They all mean exactly what they sound like.
Related terms
Sources 1
- Green, Jonathon. "load, n." Green's Dictionary of Slang, online edition. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/zhyrxui