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heterosexual

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˌhɛtəɹəˈsɛkʃuəl//
  • United Kingdom//ˌhɛtɹəˈsɛkʃuəl//
  • United States//ˌhɛtəɹəˈsɛkʃuəl//
  • United States//ˌhɛtəɹoʊˈsɛkʃuəl//

Sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex.

adjective

  1. 1

    Sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex.

    Thai charter court rules that only heterosexual marriages are constitutional: Same-sex marriage in Thailand will have to wait, as the Constitutional Court ruled unanimously today (Wednesday) that Section 1448 of the Civil and Commercial Code, defining marriage as being a union between a man and a woman, is constitutional.

    Nevertheless, Bumble, the dating app which once styled itself as a beacon of women’s empowerment because heterosexual women had to make the first move, appears to have missed the memo.

  2. 2

    Between two people of different sex.

    Early Adolescence. This is the high school period between 14 and 17 years of age. This is a confusing and stressful period for the teenager, because sexual impulses are now quite strong in spite of societal sanctions against heterosexual activity.

    On the average, the [bisexual] women’s first heterosexual attraction and experience (at 11.6 and 14.7 years) occurred before their first homosexual attraction and experience (at 16.9 and 21.4 years).

    Mankeeping describes the emotional labor women end up doing in heterosexual relationships. It goes beyond remembering birthdays or coordinating social plans. It means being your partner’s one-man support system.

  3. 3

    obsoleteHaving a sexual desire for the opposite sex seen as unhealthy, including a proclivity for nonreproductive sex.

Etymology

From hetero- + -sexual. Earliest citation from 1892, in C.G. Craddock's translation of Krafft-Ebbing's Psychopathia Sexualis.

noun

  1. 1

    A heterosexual person, or other heterosexual organism.

    The laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation apply to all people, gay and straight alike. If an antistraight boss starts firing heterosexuals, they're protected.

Forms

plural
heterosexuals
comparative
more heterosexual
superlative
most heterosexual
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).