I was reading a book, and a character in the book 'slept with' another character. So I got to thinking. We so often cite 'kick the bucket' as a euphemistic term whenever we're trying to provide examples, but we overlook slept with altogether don't we? The term has been so ingrained into our minds that the connotations associated with the term actually outweighs its literal meaning, so much so that when we see the phrase, the primary meaning that we grasp is not that of 'sleeping next to, or in the same room as someone', but rather 'having *** with someone, with, or more possibly, without actually sleeping next to him/her after that'. However, to quote Prof Ooi, 'You know a word by the company it keeps.' so in this case, perhaps we would know which meaning it refers to if we looked at the context in which it is said. So if I say 'I sleep with my mother and sister every night', I think most people would take the literal meaning, as opposed to a sentence like 'She slept with dexter last night', where most would take the figurative meaning of the sentence.

What thoughts do sentences like the following invoke in you? Do you take the literal or figurative meanings for each of them?

'Mary slept with Jane last night' -------------------- (1)
'Mary slept with Jane in summer camp last year' --------- (2)
'Mary finally slept with Jane last night' ------------------- (3)