bisexual

Etymology

From bi- + -sexual, via the French bisexuel (bi- + sexuel). 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".

adj

1. (of humans or other animals) Sexually attracted to both men and women (by a narrow definition) or to people of multiple or any genders (by a broad definition; compare pansexual).
2. (chiefly botany) Having both male and female parts, characteristics, or functions.
   1. (botany) Of flowers: having both pollen and seeds.
   2. (botany) Of sporophytes: having both male and female organs.
   3. (botany) Of gametophytes: producing both eggs and sperm.
   4. (botany) Of fungi: producing both the "female" ascogonium and the "male" antheridium.
   5. (rare) Hermaphroditic/intersex, being both male and female, or alternating between being male and being female.
      Midrash and Zohar present Adam as hermaphroditic or bisexual.
      To say that Loki is bisexual means that he readily alternates between the male and female sexes, becoming female at will or as needed. 2004, Lois Bragg, Oedipus Borealis: The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga
      Among the arguments put forth for Ishtar's hermaphroditic or bisexual character is the practice of transvestism in religious rites associated with her (e.g. Harris 2000: 170; Groneberg 1986: 39). 2013, Zainab Bahrani, Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia
   6. Androgynous.
      The bisexual name, such as Marion and Carol (and Evelyn and Vivian in England), is frequently a source of annoyance and embarrassment to the letter writer, who, if he does not know his ambiguously named correspondent personally […] 1947, Louise Pound, Kemp Malone, Arthur Garfield Kennedy, William Cabell Greet, American Speech
      At the desk, he completed the registration card, signing his name Jean Cable and giving a New York address. He did not know for sure that he was being pursued, but if so, he knew his pursuers would check new registrations around the city. The bisexual name would give them one more obstacle […] 1976, Frank V. Fowlkes, The Peruvian Contracts: A Novel, Putnam Publishing Group, page 128
      And although Stevens introduces Nanzia Nunzio as a woman, the inflections of the bisexual name and the symbolism implicit in the messenger's characteristics suggest that the "contemplated spouse" is something more than a woman. 1984, The Wallace Stevens Journal
      Consider the identity play of the French artist who gave herself the bisexual name of Claude Cahun (1894–1954). 2003, Efrat Tseëlon, Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality, Routledge, page 59
      On August 16, in Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minnesota, Michael McConnell alone applied for a marriage license for himself and Baker, under his new adoptive name. The "bisexual name of Pat […]" 2005, Minnesota Law Review, volume 89, number 6, page 1762
      The Bionic Woman of the television serial of the seventies, though she wears ordinary dress most of the time, has the bisexual name of Jamie Summers. 2013, Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism, Oxford University Press, USA, page 307
3. (chiefly biology) Having two distinct sexes, male and female (as contrasted with unisexual or hermaphroditic).
   It is probable, therefore, that hermaphroditism must be regarded as a variation from an earlier condition in which the sexes were separate, and that the hermaphrodites which occasionally appear in normally bisexual species are produced by variations occurring sporadically in the same direction. 1914, Leonard Doncaster, The Determination of Sex, page 120
   We also know that bisexual species reproduce during a longer period than hermaphrodite species. 1925, Contributions from the Zoological Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania. Zoological Laboratory, page 204
   The second line of inquiry has to do with the ultimate fate of unisexual species. Are they doomed to more rapid extinction than bisexual species? On the assumption that unisexual populations lack genetic variation, most theoretical studies […] 1981, Mosaic, page 4
4. (chiefly biology) Involving two sexes (particularly with regard to reproduction; contrast parthenogenetic or asexual).
   […] where the parthenogenetic and bisexual generations do not differ in any character except their manner of reproduction[…] 1908, Science Progress in the Twentieth Century: A Quarterly Journal of Scientific Work & Thought, page 41
   But it does not agree with our idea of orthodox sexual reproduction, since many generations may pass without the appearance of males. The reproductive products at such times are purely feminine—that is, eggs which develop without having been fertilized by a male cell, the spermatozoan. We may distinguish this form of reproduction from sexual reproduction, in the restricted sense, or bisexual reproduction, as unisexual or parthenogenetic reproduction. 1913, Kammerer's Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution of 1912, in the Congressional Serial Set, page 425
   [W]e began by noting the social advantages of bisexual reproduction, showing that bisexual beings are free and equal, and thus capable of entire community and fraternity. Thereafter, we treated the subject of bisexual reproduction more particularly: describing the ovatestis and its functions, showing how separate ovaries and testes were developed from the original ovatestes, and indicating the results of such differentiation, […]. Next, we considered asexual versus sexual reproduction: […] 1913, Francis H. Buzzacott, Mary Isabel Wymore, Bi-sexual Man: Or, Evolution of the Sexes, Life Science Inst, page 72
   Recall from earlier in this paper that H. longicornis consists of obligatory bisexual diploid races (20+XX 0; 20+X) […] and variance is obscured because of the simultaneous variables of method of reproduction (bisexuality vs. thelytoky) and […] 1983, Entomological Society of America, Bulletin of the Entomological Society of America

noun

1. A person who is bisexual.
   Several chapters are devoted to the investigations of the origins and influences prevalent in the life of a bisexual with the latter portion of the book devoted to three extensive in-depth interviews with three bisexuals. 1984, Women and deviance, page 63
2. (botany, rare) A plant or fungus, or part thereof, which is bisexual.
3. (chiefly biology) An organism (that is, a species) which has male and female sexes.
   The direct way to solve this dilemma is to study the inheritance of some specific features of genomic DNA of bisexual species by the genome of unisexual species . It seems possible to study this if the recent bisexuals resemble their ancestral […] 1999, Russian Journal of Herpetology