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 (1886), but were probably unknown to the general public until after the First World War.

Before the word "homosexual" came into use, the most common terms included "invert".