bisexual

Meanings

Adjective

• Having both male and female parts, characteristics, or functions.

Noun

• A person who is bisexual.
• A plant or fungus, or part thereof, which is bisexual.
• An organism (that is, a species) which has male and female sexes.

Related

Similar words

• perfect, hermaphrodite

Narrower meaning words

• heteroflexible, homoflexible

Origin

• From bi- + -sexual. Attested since 1792 as a synonym in botany for "hermaphroditic" ("having male and female parts"). First used of sexuality in Richard von Krafft-Ebing's 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis (in German) and Charles Gilbert Chaddock's 1892 English translation thereof, due to the theory that people were naturally attracted to the opposite sex and so the brain or mind of a person attracted to "both" sexes (or to the same sex) must be partly of another sex and thus "hermaphroditic".