homosexuality
/ˌhoʊməˌsɛkʃuˈælɪti/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.74 in modern English
28
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
7
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The state of being sexually and romantically attracted primarily or exclusively to persons of the same sex, sometimes (potentially offensive) restricted to same-sex attraction between males.
Uncountable
noun
Sexual activity with a person of the same sex, sometimes (potentially offensive) restricted to same-sex sex between males.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Great diminution or complete absence of sexual feeling for the opposite sex, with substitution of sexual feeling and instinct for the same sex. (Homo-sexuality, or contrary sexual instinct)."
- "Some of the experts have gone into the question of homosexuality with great care, and advanced sundry learned and scientific theories in regard to that abnormal condition."
- "Of the dozen or so surviving articles, squibs, and letters to the editor, the most remarkable appeared in the Whip and Satirist’s February 12, 1842, issue, and disclosed the existence of a cabal of gay men in New York's otherwise wholesome nightscape of brothels and riots. Moreover it identified the spider who minced so delicately along the wide-flung strands of the sodomitical web. "There is not one so degraded as this Captain Collins, the King of the Sodomites." He was a foreigner, an Englishman, in the long tradition of blaming homosexuality on the influence of aliens. Among the syndicate of perverts, the writer announced, "we find no Americans as yet—they are all Englishmen or French" (the English called homosexuality the French vice and the French the English vice; for the Whip it was the French and English vice)."
- "The state hierarchizes sexuality by defining homosexuality as an influence that corrupts minors. Such a discourse produces a notion of the correct sexual behavior that transcends into the political realm, reinforcing the heteronationalistic nature of the nation-building."
- "Bourneville believes that 75 per cent. of the inmates of the Parisian venereal hospitals have practised homosexuality."
- "A Prussian proposal for a harsh penal code made male homosexuality an even more serious crime."
Etymology
From homosexual + -ity, equivalent to homo- + sexuality and after the model of German Homosexualität, coined by journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny in 1869, and French homosexualité, attested in 1891.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Prefix: homo-
- Root: Homosexualität, homosexualité
- Suffix: homosexual
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌhoʊməˌsɛkʃuˈælɪti/
- British English: /ˌhəʊmə(ʊ)sɛkʃʊˈælɪti/