Words about sex and gender, part 3: Eng. sexual ~ Sp. sexual

[This entry is taken from a chapter of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]

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Eng. sexual ~ Sp. sexual

The adjectives associated with our cognate nouns Eng. sex ~ Sp. sexo are both written sexual, and they are pronounced ['sɛkʃʊəɫ], [ˈsɛkʃwəɫ], or [ˈsɛkʃəɫ] in English, and [sekˈsu̯al] in Spanish. As usual, in Spanish rapid speech, the implosive [k] sound in sexual may be elided or faintly pronounced, resulting in the colloquial pronunciation [se^kˈsu̯al] or [seˈsu̯al] (cf. Part I, Chapter 7).

Both of these words are loanwords from the Late Latin adjective sexuālis ‘of a woman, feminine’, derived from Latin sexus. Lat. sexuālis is derived by means of the third declension adjectival suffix ‑āl‑(is).[1] the adjective sexuālis is not attested in Classical Latin, though its derivation is a regular one by means of the third declension adjectival suffix ‑āl‑(is), source of the Latinate cognate suffixes Eng. ‑al ~ Sp. ‑al.  The maintenance of the ‑u‑ in Lat. sexuālis is due to it being a fourth declension noun. Had sexus been a second declension noun, like most Latin nouns whose nominative inflection is ‑us, the adjective derived from it by means of the adjectival suffix ‑āl‑(is) would have been *sexālis. The maintenance of the ‑u‑ in sexuālis is due to the nouns sexus being a fourth declension noun, Latin’s u-stem declension, a small and rather special one. The same thing is true of manuālis, source of Eng. manual and Sp. manual, derived from the noun fourth declension (feminine) manus ‘hand’ (man‑us), source of (also feminine) Sp. mano ‘hand’.[2]

The OED tells us that Lat. sexuālis is first attested in the 5th century, with the meaning ‘of a woman’, and that English borrowed this word before other European languages did, in the early 17th century, at first also with the meaning ‘characteristic of or peculiar to the female sex; feminine’ (OED), a sense that is now obsolete. By the mid-17th century, however, Eng. sexual was also being used with the meaning ‘of, relating to, or arising from the fact or condition of being either male or female; predicated on biological sex; (also) of, relating to, or arising from gender, orientation regarding sex, or the social and cultural relations between the sexes’ (OED). The use of this word in biology is from the 19th century.[3] Other senses are also from the 18th or 19th centuries. French dictionaries tell us that this language did not adopt the cognate adjective sexuel [sɛksɥɛl] (fem. sexuelle, same pronunciation) until the middle of the 18th century. DCEH doesn’t find a written record or attestation of Sp. sexual until the early 19th century.

sexual  adjective 1.   [usually before noun] connected with the physical activity of sex     sexual behaviour/activity/desire      sexual abuse/assault/violence      sexual acts/offences      They were not having a sexual relationship at the time.      He denied having had sexual relations with her.      She engaged frequently in casual sexual encounters.      The drop-in centres will provide a range of advice and support on sexual health.      Her interest in him is purely sexual.      sexual orientation/identity (= whether you are heterosexual, gay or bisexual)      a sexual partner (= a person who you have sex with)      He has not threatened them, or made overtly sexual remarks. 2.   [only before noun] connected with the process of producing young      the sexual organs (= the penis, vagina, etc.)      sexual reproduction 3.   [usually before noun] connected with the state of being male or female      sexual characteristics

Table 3: Entry for sexual in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 10e (2020)

English dictionaries differ as to how they divide the meaning of the word sexual into senses and subsenses. It is common to give at least three senses for the word, as in the entry from the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD) shown on Table 3. The first and main sense has to do with ‘the physical activity of sex’, whereas the other two have to do with ‘sexual reproduction’ and ‘sexual characteristics’.

Sp. sexual is used in much the same way as its English cognate and with the same meanings (senses). The main difference is that in English, the noun sex is often used as a modifier in compounds and thus it sometimes this noun translates into English as the adjective sexual, e.g., sex life = vida sexual and sex education = educación sexual. Eng. sexual is found in some common idiomatic expressions or collocations. These are some of the main ones, with their most common Spanish equivalents, which are usually clones of the English ones:

• sexual abuse – abuso sexual, abusos deshonestos
• sexual assault – agresión sexual
• sexual attraction – atracción sexual
• sexual discrimination – discriminación sexual
• sexual equality – igualdad sexual/de sexos
• sexual harassment – acoso sexual
• sexual intercourse – relaciones sexuales, el acto sexual
• sexual orientation – orientación sexual
• sexual partner – pareja, etc.
• sexual politics – política de los sexos
• sexual preference – preferencias sexuales
• sexual relations – relaciones sexuales, trato carnal
• sexual relationship – relación sexual
• the sexual revolution – la revolución sexual
• sexual stereotype – estereotipo sexual

There are also a number of adjectives derived from the adjective sexual by means of prefixes or pseudo-prefixes. All of these words are written the same way in English and Spanish:

·      homosexual (Eng. [ˌhɒmoʊ̯'sɛkʃʊəɫ]/[ˌhɒmə'sɛkʃʊəɫ], Sp. [omose(k)ˈsu̯al]): ‘adjective feeling or involving sexual attraction to people of one's own sex. noun a homosexual person’ (COED)

·      heterosexual (Eng. [ˌhɛtəɹoʊ̯'sɛkʃ(ʊ)əɫ]/[ˌhɛtəɹə'sɛkʃ(ʊ)əɫ], Sp. [et̪eɾose(k)ˈsu̯al]): ‘adjective sexually attracted to the opposite sex. ▶involving or characterized by such sexual attraction. noun a heterosexual person’ (COED)

·      bisexual (Eng. [baɪ̯'sɛkʃʊəɫ], Sp. [bise(k)ˈsu̯al]}: ‘adjective (1) sexually attracted to both men and women. (2) Biology having characteristics of both sexes. noun a person who is sexually attracted to both men and women’ (COED)

·      asexual: ‘adjective (1) Biology without sex or sexual organs. ▶ (of reproduction) not involving the fusion of gametes. (2) without sexual feelings or associations’ (COED)

·      transexual (Eng. only: also transsexual): ‘noun a person born with the physical characteristics of one sex who emotionally and psychologically feels that they belong to the opposite sex. adjective relating to such a person’ (COED)

·      unisexual ‘of one sex. ▶ Botany having either stamens or pistils but not both’ (COED)

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[1] The actual derivational suffix is ‑āl‑, whereas the ending ‑is is the nominative singular inflection for 2^nd/3^rd declension adjectives, cf. Part I, Chapter 8. This suffix has the reflexes Eng. ‑al ~ Sp. ‑al, found in multiple adjectives in these languages that were borrowed from Latin.

[2] Most fourth-declension nouns are masculine, like sexus, but manus is an exception, which explains why Sp. mano ‘hand’ is feminine.

[3] The OED defines this sense of sexual, first attested in 1830, as ‘Of an animal, plant, or other organism: characterized by sex; sexed, sexuate; capable of sexual reproduction; having distinct male and female reproductive organs, often (though not necessarily) in separate individuals. Opposed to asexual’ (OED).