Word.ws English Dictionary

heterosex

heterosex noun: heterosexual sex.

Noun

heterosex (usually uncountable, plural heterosexes)

  1. (usually) Heterosexual sex.
    • Homosexual appetites, tastes, and fantasies, one is reminded while listening to Elliot, appear to be every bit as various as heterosexual ones, with the range of homosex—running from an almost Platonic love to sadistic lust—being no less wide than that of heterosex.1970 September, Joseph Epstein, “Homo/Hetero: The Struggle for Sexual Identity”, in Harper’s Magazine, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, →OCLC
    • These [gay] characters will not accept the past solutions of heterosexual society. They will not commit suicide, nor will they seek salvation in heterosex.1980 April 12, David Roggensack, “The Thing of Shapes to Come”, in Gay Community News, page 15

Verb

heterosex (third-person singular simple present heterosexes, present participle heterosexing, simple past and past participle heterosexed)

  1. (transitive) To make heterosexual.
    • For example, the heterosexing of public space means that while heterosexual couples can hold hands or kiss goodbye in the street, the same behaviour from same-sex couples is likely to attract attention and sometimes verbal or physical sanctions against them.2013, Paul Cloke, Philip Crang, Mark Goodwin, Introducing Human Geographies, page 651
    • Although each society defines its own norms, most of them assign a higher status to men over women, to heterosexual persons over non-heterosexual ones, and to heterosexed bodies over non-heterosexed ones.2014, MariaCaterina La Barbera, Identity and Migration in Europe: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Antonyms of heterosex

Forms of heterosex

Noun
pluralheterosexes
Verb
third-person singular presentheterosexes
present participleheterosexing
past participleheterosexed
pastheterosexed

Origin of heterosex

From hetero- + sex. Attested since the 20th century.

Questions about heterosex

What does heterosex mean?
Heterosex means heterosexual sex.
What part of speech is heterosex?
Heterosex can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of heterosex?
The plural of heterosex is heterosexes.

Words near heterosex in the dictionary

  1. heteroscian
  2. heteroscians
  3. heterosegmental
  4. heterosegmentally
  5. heteroses
  6. heterosex
  7. heterosexed
  8. heterosexes
  9. heterosexing
  10. heterosexism
  11. heterosexisms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: heterosex (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “heterosex.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heterosex. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.