omnisexual
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: ŏm′nĭ-sĕk′sho͞o-əl
ipa: /ˌɒm.nɪˈsɛk.ʃuː.əl/
ipa: /ˌɑm.nɪˈsɛk.ʃu.əl/
rhymes: -ɛkʃuəl
rhymes: -ɛkʃuːəl
Etymology: From omni- + -sexual.
Senses: examples: text: This omnisexual libertine who shuttles between his whore and his catamite (with equally regular visits to his tailor) has no classical prototype since aggressive bisexuality was completely acceptable as ‘masculine’ behaviour in ancient Greek society.
ref: 1988 August, Susan C. Shapiro, “‘Yon Plumed Dandebrat’: Male ‘Effeminacy’ in English Satire and Criticism”, in The Review of English Studies, volume 39, number 155, →JSTOR, page 411:
text: There was something in this that made our relationship more than homosexual, and more than heterosexual. Perhaps it could be called an omnisexual relationship.
ref: 1996 July 24, Ferdinando Camon with John Shepley, The Sickness Called Man, Marlboro Press, →ISBN, page 9:
text: In short, all readers can share, consciously and/or unconsciously, Whitman’s omnisexual vision—omnisexual in the all-encompassing sense of embracing auto-, homo-, and heteroerotic impulses.
ref: 1998 August 1, James E. Miller, Jr., “Sex and Sexuality”, in J. R. LeMaster, Donald D. Kummings, editors, Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, Routledge, →ISBN, →OL, page 631:
text: These Oedipal tensions are mirrored by a structural conflict between the [new Doctor Who] series’ tacit multiculturalism—captured by omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness, who exemplifies an exogamous future humankind that goes to the stars to “dance” with every species they meet—and the drive to reunite the nuclear family […]
ref: 2008 May 2, Mark Bould, “Science Fiction Television in the United Kingdom”, in J. P. Telotte, editor, The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 225:
glosses: Being attracted to all genders (sometimes distinguished from pansexual by saying omnisexual attraction may still take account of gender or prefer particular genders).
examples: text: Psyche’s participation in the archetypical patterns of heroic action logically implies that heroism itself is an asexual or omnisexual archetype.
ref: 1979 Autumn, Lee R. Edwards, “The Labors of Psyche: Toward a Theory of Female Heroism”, in Critical Inquiry, volume 6, number 1, →JSTOR, page 44:
text: Historically, sameness sexism marks the disappearance of conditions in which goddess religions flourished: prepatriarchal conditions in which men imagined women as awesome, omnipotent birth-givers, omnisexual creatures with both big breasts and penises.
ref: 1998, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, The Anatomy of Prejudices, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, →ISBN, →OL:
glosses: Androgynous, exhibiting traits of all sexes.
examples: text: Both Queen Victoria and Sigmund Freud have, however, become common adjectives in our time, one describing the Dark Ages of sexual repression, the other an omnisexual world in which everything has sexual significance.
ref: 1982 April, Sterling Fishman, “The History of Childhood Sexuality”, in Journal of Contemporary History, volume 17, number 2, →JSTOR, page 279:
text: To be a virgin in high school wasn't, even in the omnisexual milieu of the Pioneer Valley, such a social black spot.
ref: 2009, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Admission, New York: Grand Central Publishing, →ISBN, →OL:
glosses: Having or exhibiting sexuality everywhere.
Derived terms: omnisexuality
omnisexually