Word.ws English Dictionary

sexual inversion

sexual inversion noun: homosexuality, as regarded by a theory of the late 19th and early 20th century that saw it as an inborn reversal of gender traits.

Noun

sexual inversion (uncountable)

  1. (dated) Homosexuality, as regarded by a theory of the late 19th and early 20th century that saw it as an inborn reversal of gender traits.
    • Congenital sexual inversion—that is to say, sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex—is a comparatively rare phenomenon, so far as our knowledge at present extends.1901, Henry Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion (Studies in the Psychology of Sex), Philadelphia: F. A. Davies, page 1
    • The average homosexual […] [is] a young person from an upper-middle-class family who is deeply troubled by sexual inversion and painfully eager to feel acceptance within home and community.1978 October, Lois Spear, U.S. Catholic

Questions about sexual inversion

What does sexual inversion mean?
Sexual inversion means homosexuality, as regarded by a theory of the late 19th and early 20th century that saw it as an inborn reversal of gender traits.
What part of speech is sexual inversion?
Sexual inversion is a noun.

Words near sexual inversion in the dictionary

  1. sexual headache
  2. sexual headaches
  3. sexual identity
  4. sexual intercourse
  5. sexual intercourses
  6. sexual inversion
  7. sexual literacies
  8. sexual literacy
  9. sexual majorities
  10. sexual majority
  11. sexual market value

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sexual inversion (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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