A recent study undertaken by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University revealed that there was no definite connotation attached to the term "had sex". Different people attached different meanings to it.

After a random telephonic survey of 204 men and 282 women from across Indiana, researchers revealed that the term managed to confuse most people, with each attaching a different meaning to it. The respondents were from the age groups of 18 to 96 years, and most of them were heterosexual.

Although 95% of them agreed that having sex was penile-vaginal intercourse, 11% stressed that it was not sex if there was no ejaculation.

30% of the respondents said that oral sex was not akin to having sex and 20% did not consider anal sex as so.

"There's a vagueness of what sex is in our culture and media. If people don't consider certain behaviors sex, they might not think sexual health messages about risk pertain to them. The essence of misclassification is simple -- people are either incorrectly classified as having sex or incorrectly classified as not having sex", said the researchers.

Details of the study have been published in the journal Sexual Health.