sexual
/ˈsɛkʃʊəl
/ /ˈsɛksjʊəl /adjective
1Relating to the instincts, physiological processes, and activities connected with physical attraction or intimate physical contact between individuals: she had felt the thrill of a sexual attraction...
- This was physical attraction, sexual temptation, nothing more.
- Automobiles, contact sports, uncontrolled sexual activity - all ripe for criminalizing.
- Integral to Wagnerian ideology is a belief that all sense of individual identity vanishes during sexual activity.
Synonyms
carnal, erotic, coital, venereal;
sensual
2Relating to the two sexes or to gender: sensitivity about sexual stereotypes...
- This cultural code expresses contempt for the body; devalues race, gender and sexual difference; and is fixated on ownership and control.
- The award-winning British play promises a salacious good time with its decidedly postmodern take on gender and sexual power relationships in the middle ages.
- It is often based on systematic observation, and can serve as a genuinely useful tool for expanding our concepts of sexual and gender possibilities.
2.1Of or characteristic of one sex or the other: the hormones which control the secondary sexual characteristics...
- To recognize these differences should however not lead to an essentialism grounded in sexual or cultural characteristics.
- Whether Basil was really male or female was quite impossible to tell; a fox hides its sexual characteristics very effectively between its legs.
- Laelae and their equivalent elsewhere in the Pacific clearly point to a dislocation between sexual anatomy and gender identity.
3 Biology (Of reproduction) involving the fusion of gametes.
3.1Being of one sex or the other; capable of sexual reproduction: the asexual winged forms lay the eggs which hatch into the sexual form
Synonyms
reproductive, genital, sex, procreative
Origin
Mid 17th century: from late Latin sexualis, from Latin sexus 'sex'.