| 释义 |
sexual, a.|ˈsɛksjuːəl|
Also 7 -all.
[a. late L. sexuāl-is (5th c.), f. L. sexu-s sex. Cf. F. sexuel (18th c.), Sp., Pg. sexual, It. sessuale.]
Many collocations are paralleled by and equivalent to combs. with sex (see sex n. 5). These are not individually listed or defined below.
1. Of or pertaining to sex or the attribute of being either male or female; existing or predicated with regard to sex.
1651Biggs New Disp. ⁋69 The same simple rotteth, and is changed into little animals, these are..of both sexes, which truly would not come to passe if those simples had already a sex or sexuall powers within them. 1760J. Lee Introd. Bot. (1776) Pref. 9 The Honour of having first suggested the true sexual Distinctions in Plants appears to be due to..Sir Thomas Millington. 1794R. J. Sulivan View Nat. II. 222 One only single sexual pair of every species of living things. 1803Syd. Smith Wks. (1859) I. 46/1 Delphine is said to be intended for the authoress, and Madame de Vernon (by a slight sexual metamorphosis) for Talleyrand. 1874Sayce Compar. Philol. vii. 249 We may take, by way of illustration, the question of gender. What..was the source..of the sexual relation of nouns? 1877Huxley Anat. Inv. Anim. ii. 81 These extremely simple organisms have not yet reached the stage of sexual differentiation. 1968S. Hynes Edwardian Turn of Mind vi. 201 It was an easy grammatical step..to shift the blame from sexual discrimination to sex itself. 1981N. Tucker Child & Book vii. 212 Children's perceptions of their sexual roles are built up from many different sources.
(b) spec. in sexual politics, the principles determining the relationship of the sexes; so sexual-political adj., sexual politician.
1970K. Millett Sexual Politics p. xii, The prospect of radical change in sexual politics. Ibid. ii. iii. 110 The sexual-political predilections of each faction. Ibid. iv. 233 So we proceed to the counter⁓revolutionary sexual politicians themselves—Lawrence, Miller and Mailer.
2. a. Pertaining to sex as concerned in generation or in the processes connected with this. sexual dimorphism, the condition in which there exist marked differences in form or appearance between the sexes of a species in addition to differences in the sexual organs themselves; sexual intercourse, copulation; sexual interference (euphem.), sexual assault or molestation; sexual selection: see selection 3 b.
1799Med. Jrnl. II. 323 The act of sexual intercourse. 1800Wordsworth Lyrical Ballads I. p. xxxii, From this principle the direction of the sexual appetite, and all the passions connected with it take their origin. 1803Med. Jrnl. X. 509 Sexual function is impaired. 1821Blackw. Mag. IX. 282/1 Some one has said that Sir George Etherege was the first who founded a comedy barefacedly upon the sexual passion. 1826Kirby & Sp. Entomol. III. 334 It is most probably for sexual purposes. 1836–9Todd's Cycl. Anat. II. 695/1 We are inclined to attribute very little weight to the nature of the sexual desires of the malformed individual. 1849W. M. Thackeray Pendennis I. xxv. 239 That anxiety with which brooding women watch over their sons' affections... I have no doubt there is a sexual jealousy on the mother's part, and a secret pang. 1861Emerson Soc. & Solit. Wks. (Bohn) III. 133 To insure the existence of the race, she [Nature] reinforces the sexual instinct. 1863E. V. Neale Anal. Thought & Nat. 183 The sexual impulse. 1868H. Maudsley Physiol. & Pathol. of Mind (ed. 2) ii. iii. 405 Acute dementia..connected, he believes, with the effect produced on the nervous system by sexual intercourse. 1876J. S. Bristowe Theory & Pract. Med. (1878) 329 It [acne] has a special connection with the period of development and maturation of the sexual functions. 1880Bessey Bot. 206 No sexual organs are known [in Protophytes], and whether the sexual act occurs or not is somewhat doubtful. 1888Sexual dimorphism [see dimorphism b]. 1898Alienist & Neurologist Oct. 613 From whatever side and from whatever symptoms we start, we always unfailingly reach the region of the sexual life. 1898‘S. Grand’ Beth Bk. xliv. 417 The sex question..is the stock-in-trade of every author, as if there were nothing..in the lives of men and women but their sexual relations. 1902Encycl. Brit. XXVII. 625/2 Bonellia and Hamingia are very interesting examples of sexual dimorphism... The male is reduced to a minute..organism, which passes its life..in a special recess of the nephridia of the female. 1903G. B. Shaw Man & Superman p. xvi, The Don Juan play..is to deal with sexual attraction. 1928W. S. Maugham Sacred Flame iii. 142 You can't go without food... But you can go without the satisfaction of your sexual appetites. 1929D. H. Lawrence Pornography & Obscenity 18 The young man and the young woman went and had sexual intercourse together. 1932S. Zuckerman Soc. Life Monkeys & Apes xiii. 212 It is possible that sexual dimorphism plays some part in determining the monogamy or polygyny of a species. 1934Blunden Choice or Chance 58 You saw the mystical idea of course—..roughly, my Tristram is the Sexual Force. 1951N. Mitford Blessing xi. 118 If you don't empty your mind and heart of sexual jealousy..you will never be happy with me. 1957R. Chandler Let. 28 Apr. (1981) 441, I had not filled myself with sexual fantasies. 1960C. Day Lewis Buried Day vi. 107 The conflict and guilt set up by masturbation..and the sexual fantasies attached to it. 1968S. Hynes Edwardian Turn of Mind vi. 195 The biological facts of sexual attraction and the urge to reproduce. 1968‘A. Gilbert’ Night Encounter iv. 45 Quite a young girl... No attempt at sexual interference, no signs of pregnancy. 1970Cambr. Anc. Hist. (ed. 3) I. i. v. 156 Even allowing for marked sexual dimorphism it is still obvious that more than one species [of Australopithecine] demands recognition. 1971P. D. James Shroud for Nightingale vii. 246 The late Mr. Dettinger hadn't understood [many things], his wife's sexual needs among them. 1973B. A. Tonkin tr. Lorenz & Leyhausen's Motivation Human & Animal Behaviour iii. 53 The sexual drives bring forces of a new kind pulling in a new direction. 1974H. R. F. Keating Underside xi. 108 She must know..that men had sexual urges, that they could not live without any sexual experience of any sort. 1978P. G. Winslow Coppergold 163 Post-mortem had shown that the girl had had sexual relations with a man just before her death. 1979Times Lit. Suppl. 23 Nov. 20/1 Edel..suggests..that after it was clear that a sexual relationship with Virginia was impossible he [sc. Leonard Woolf] sublimated his sexual drives in work. 1980D. Newsome On Edge of Paradise 382 He had no sexual life; all his sexual instincts had to be sublimated. 1981A. Edwards Sonya xix. 321 Her diary..is filled with musings on her sexual needs, frustrations, and fantasies. 1981G. Markstein Ultimate Issue 261 ‘And at these places sexual intimacy took place—’ Christ almighty..how many more times is he going to say it. Sexual misconduct. Sexual intercourse.
b. sexual organs, the organs of sexual generation in animals or plants.
1828Stark Elem. Nat. Hist. II. 407 Worms..with..the sexual organs separate. 1861J. R. Greene Man. Anim. Kingd., Cœlent. 74 If the producing zoöid possess sexual organs. 1882Vines Sachs' Bot. 224 The morphological characters of the sexual organs.
c. Of or pertaining to the organs of sex.
1836–9Todd's Cycl. Anat. II. 695/1 In attempting to determine the true sex in such doubtful instances of sexual formation. 1898Syd. Soc. Lex., Sexual diseases, diseases of the sexual organs.
d. sexual system (or sexual method): the Linnæan classification of plants, based on the differences in their sexual organization.
In 1735 Linnæus (Bibl. Bot., ed. 1747, p. 64) has systema sexuale, referred to 1731.
1760J. Lee Introd. Bot. (1776) Pref. 6 Dr. Linnæus; whose Labours..and whose Invention of the Sexual System in particular, are well known. 1825T. K. Cromwell Colchester 352 The herbaceous collection will be arranged according to the sexual system of Linnæus.
3. Relative to the physical intercourse between the sexes or the gratification of sexual appetites, as sexual morality, sexual vice, sexual excess, etc. sexual athlete, a sexually vigorous person, a skilled performer in sexual intercourse; so sexual athleticism, sexual athletics; sexual inversion: see inversion 11; sexual psychopathy: see psychopathy 1; hence sexual psychopath, sexual psychopathic adj.; sexual revolution, the liberalization of established social and moral attitudes to sex.
1792M. Wollstonecraft Rights of Woman vii. 273 (heading) Modesty.—comprehensively considered, and not as a sexual virtue. 1878Gladstone Prim. Homer 112 Sexual frailty exists among Achaians, only in narrow measure. 1888K. Pearson Ethics of Freethought v. 120 Another good example is that of sexual morality; here the most difficult questions arise. 1897C. Lombroso in T. L. Stedman Twentieth Century Practice XII. 402 We have seen that in the most extraordinary tendencies of sexual psychopathy..the somatic and hereditary signs are epileptoid in character. 1908G. B. Shaw Getting Married 182 Whilst the subject is considered shameful..we shall have no systematic instruction in sexual hygiene. 1910tr. Freud's Lectures in Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. XXI. 218 The claims of our civilization make life too hard for the greater part of humanity..without producing an excess of cultural gain by this excess of sexual repression. 1911Contemp. Rev. Sept. 383 Berlin is outbidding Paris in its sexual immorality. 1924Internat. Jrnl. Psycho-analysis V. 95 (heading) The sexual offender. 1934A. Huxley Beyond Mexique Bay 44 Places where people..obey other sexual taboos. 1936‘R. West’ Thinking Reed viii. 265 It sounded insincere, as if she were merely obeying a sexual convention. 1938John Marshall Law Q. III. 407 The proposed law is as follows: An Act to Provide for the Commitment and Detention of Criminal Sexual Psychopathic Persons. 1939R. Pearl Nat. Hist. Population 293 Some present-day examples of sexual athletes who make Casanova, the traditional star, seem a somewhat puny performer. Ibid., I thought you might be interested in some cases of—as it seems to me—prodigious sexual athleticism. 1941Horizon Sept. 161 All societies, as the price of survival, have to insist on a fairly high standard of sexual morality. 1945T. P. Wolfe tr. Reich's Sexual Revolution ix. 64 Soviet sexual legislation was the clearest expression of the first attack of the sexual revolution on the reactionary sexual order. 1950Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. LVI. 142/1 Since 1937 twelve states and the District of Columbia have enacted sexual psychopath laws. Ibid. 142/2 The concept of the ‘sexual psychopath’ is so vague that it cannot be used for judicial and administrative purposes. 1954B. Karpman Sexual Offender xii. 224 Determination of the question of sexual psychopathy is by a superior court and commitment is for an indefinite period. 1957H. M. Hacker in Marriage & Family Living XIX. 232/1 In societies which differentiate strongly between masculine and feminine social roles, individuals who manifest personality traits ascribed to the opposite sex or who feel inadequate in fulfilling their part of the sexual division of labor may become confused in their sexual identification, and feel that they must also change their sexual object. 1958J. Byrom Or be He Dead iii. 37 Essays about sexual perverts. 1961R. F. C. Hull tr. Jung's Freud & Psychoanal. in Coll. Works IV. iv. 321 As soon as we enter the field of neurosis, this antithesis is stretched to the limit. God becomes the symbol of the most complete sexual repression. 1963B. Friedan Feminine Mystique (1965) xi. 266 A woman who is herself only a sexual object, lives finally in a world of objects, unable to touch in others the individual identity she lacks herself. 1967B. W. Tuchman in Sat. Rev. (U.S.) 25 Feb. 28/3 Sexual perversion and hallucinatory drugs..‘are not what human history is about.’ 1968S. Hynes Edwardian Turn of Mind vi. 201 The [suffrage] movement never made sexual freedom a goal. 1968A. Diment Bang Bang Birds ii. vi. 81 You'd think his life work was spreading American sexual mores around the world. 1969Daily Tel. (Colour Suppl.) 24 Oct. 35/2 The family is not composed of sexual athletes and cannot make love 20 times a day and so cannot try everything. 1970Guardian 12 Nov. 10/3 Would he have to do anything awful in the way of sexual athleticism? 1970K. Millett Sexual Politics iii. 62 A sexual revolution would require..an end of traditional sexual inhibitions and taboos. 1971G. Steiner In Bluebeard's Castle i. 15 Bourgeois sexual ethics were a veneer, masking a great area of turbulent hypocrisy. 1971H. Lee Surrogate Wife (1972) 27 Nice girls..were less likely to be able to copulate with strangers, even if those strangers were sexual therapists. 1972P. D. James Unsuitable Job iv. 144 One of the more innocuous of sexual deviations. 1972P. Cousins (title) Christianity and sexual liberation. 1975G. Howell In Vogue 62 Sexual deviation was becoming respectable. Ibid., The sexual education of the jazz age. 1975L. Farley in N.Y. Times 19 Aug. 38/1 Sexual harassment of women in their place of employment is extremely widespread. 1976Globe & Mail (Toronto) 16 Feb. 1/6 Police said the report of a pathologist who examined the bodies makes no mention of a sexual assault. 1976Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts June 351/2 The 4,500 magazines dealing in specialized trades or tastes from ironmongery to sexual athletics. 1977Evening Gaz. (Middlesbrough) 11 Jan. 3/4 Sexual offences, mainly indecent assault on females, increased by 17. 1977R. Green in W. H. Masters et al. Ethical Issues in Sex Therapy & Research vii. 198 There are clinicians of considerable sophistication utilizing sexual surrogates. 1977C. Fremlin Spider-Orchid viii. 61 In spite of Permissiveness and the Sexual Revolution..nothing had changed! 1978Times 7 Aug. 2/4 Contraception..is producing..a profound alteration in sexual behaviour. 1979J. Crosby Party of Year xvi. 99 Decadent bourgeois sexual perversions. 1981J. B. Hilton Surrender Value xiv. 104 He was a mild man... There was no record..of sexual aberration. 1982R. Grayson Montmartre Murders xi. 91, I have been told that Suji's sexual appetite is formidable.
4. a. Of animals and plants: Having sex; sexed; separated into two sexes; having sexual organs; producing offspring by means of sexual congress. (Opposed to asexual.)
1830Lindley Nat. Syst. Bot. Introd. 18 Plants are naturally and primarily divided into two great divisions, called Sexual and Asexual. 1861Hulme tr. Moquin-Tandon ii. vii. 329 The Linguatulæ are at first asexual... They pass..into the bodies of the carnivora.., where they complete their development, and become sexual. 1880Bessey Bot. 361 They [sc. Vascular Cryptogams] present an alternation of sexual and asexual generations. 1882Vines Sachs' Bot. 273 It is only towards the close of the period of growth that sexual individuals make their appearance.
b. sexual cell, a reproductive cell which is either male or female; a sperm-cell or an egg-cell.
1868Darwin Anim. & Pl. II. xii. 2 Some trifling peculiarity..transmitted through the male or female sexual cells. 1883Aveling tr. Haeckel's Pedigree Man, etc. 242 That blending of the two kinds of sexual cells that is the sole essential in sexual reproduction.
c. Of reproduction in animals or plants: Taking place by means of the congress of the two sexes. Opposed to asexual or agamic.
1872H. C. Wood Fresh-w. Algæ 100 The propagation is both sexual and non-sexual. 1882Vines Sachs' Bot. 251 Conjugation is the simplest form of sexual reproduction.
5. Characteristic of or peculiar to the one sex or the other.
secondary sexual characters: those marks of sex (e.g. the beard in man, the distinctive plumage in birds) which are not immediately connected with the reproductive structure.
1815Sporting Mag. XLVI. 74 Her looks, her turns, her whole manner of speaking and acting is sexual. 1826Kirby & Sp. Entomol. III. 316 Of all the organs of the head, none seem so little subject to sexual variation as the under-jaws. 1839De Quincey Recoll. Lakes Wks. 1862 II. 204 To ingraft, by her sexual sense of beauty, upon his masculine austerity those graces, which [etc.].
6. Having reference to the sexes.
1879St. George's Hosp. Rep. IX. 719 The sexual distribution of this disease.
▸ sexual harassment n. harassment (typically of a woman by a man) in a workplace or other professional or social situation, involving the making of unwanted sexual advances, obscene remarks, etc.
1973Appleton (Wisconsin) Post-Crescent 13 Oct. 1 Katie Miller of the Division of Equal Opportunities said she does not know how many verbal complaints the agency receives on *sexual harassment of employes. 1989Independent (BNC) 18 Dec. 5 Preventing sexual harassment is part of good management because good managers will wish to ensure that their employees are treated with respect and dignity. 2000M. Blake 24 Karat Schmooze (2001) xxv. 285 Surprisingly, he had made it to the end of term without courting any sexual harassment cases. |