Homosexual

The word Homosexual (meaning sexually or romantically attached to members of the same sex) is a combination of Greek and Latin roots; the Greek element, ὁμός (homos) means "the same" and is not connected with the Latin "homo" meaning "man". The term was invented by the Hungarian writer Károly Mária Kertbeny, in a letter to the German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs in 1868. The terms homosexual and heterosexual came into use among scientists after Richard von Krafft-Ebing used then in his book Psychopathia Sexualis but were probably unkown to the general public until after the First World War.