Bisexual

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /baɪˈsɛk.ʃʊ.əl/

Definitions

1. Representing a romantic or sexual orientation characterized by attraction to both men and women
2. Characterizing an individual whose affection and sexual interest are directed towards people of both genders
3. Referring to a sexual orientation that encompasses attraction to individuals of both male and female sexes

Etymology: The most surprising fact is that this term began in botany, not psychology. In 1792, the French botanist Palisot de Beauvois described a plant's urn as a "bisexual flower," meaning one bearing both male and female parts. The word was built from the Latin prefix "bi-" and "sexual," and it was used to mean hermaphroditic, a sense it kept for over a century. The move from plants to people came in the 1880s and 1890s. Richard von Krafft-Ebing's 1886 "Psychopathia Sexualis," translated into English by Charles Gilbert Chaddock in 1892, applied the word to human sexuality. Its logic rested on the belief that a person attracted to both sexes, or to the same sex, must be partly of the other sex and therefore hermaphroditic. By 1906, Otto Weininger's book in English translation described people with "an inclination to both sexes" as "bisexual," and Havelock Ellis's 1915 "Sexual Inversion" noted that the older term "psychosexual hermaphroditism" was giving way to "bisexuality." The word had shed its botanical and medical assumptions and settled into its current meaning.

Synonyms: pansexual, omnisexual, heteroflexible, homoflexible

Antonyms: heterosexual, homosexual