heterosexual

[ het-er-uh-sek-shoo-uhlor, especially British, -seks-yoo- ]

adjective

1. of, relating to, or exhibiting heterosexuality, sexual desire or behavior directed toward people of the other binary gender.
2. Biology. of or relating to different sexes:

   heterosexual fraternal twins.

noun

1. a person who is sexually or romantically attracted primarily to people of the other binary gender.

heterosexual

/ ˌhɛtərəʊˈsɛksjʊəl /

noun

1. a person who is sexually attracted to the opposite sex

adjective

1. of or relating to heterosexuality

Word History and Origins

Origin of heterosexual¹

First recorded in 1890–95; hetero- + sexual

Example Sentences

In heterosexual couples, it often makes financial sense for the woman to be the one to leave her job or risk losing it by taking on childcare duties.

From Time

Just as the disease continues to claim more lives, quarantine-linked domestic violence is claiming more victims—and not just women in heterosexual relationships.

From Time

The next step is equality for children born of heterosexual couples and those of same-sex parents.

From Washington Blade

It does, after all, feature a heterosexual romance between its crossdressing title character and the military leader whose battalion she joins after disguising herself as a boy.

From Vox

The journey continued from The Real World to fatherhood — after he discovered a decade late that a woman he’d had a teenage heterosexual relationship with had given birth to his son.

From Ozy

However much we gossip about heterosexual couples with large age gaps, we at least refrain from calling them sex offenders.

From The Daily Beast

Isolated lesbians learned that there were other women like them via books whose covers aimed to titillate heterosexual men.

From The Daily Beast

“It was just another assumption based on a paradigm that marginalizes non-heterosexual people,” he writes.

From The Daily Beast

Men, particularly white, heterosexual men, are undeniably in charge.

From The Daily Beast

The children were assessed over time and those results were matched to children from heterosexual couples.

From The Daily Beast

Both admitted the alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual magnetism.

From Project Gutenberg

Homosexual Eros has a different finality than heterosexual Eros.

From Project Gutenberg

Homosexual choice of object is originally more natural to narcism than the heterosexual.

From Project Gutenberg

Nearly all heterosexual shoe-fetichists seem, however, to be equally attracted by high heels.

From Project Gutenberg

Eliminating all these, there remain 44 heterosexual captures of adults.

From Project Gutenberg