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Glite Dictionary
⚧️ Both male and female 🚻 Between sexes
intersexual

intersexual

8.7
Happening between males and females, for example in behavior
  • adjective
  • /ˌɪntərˈsɛkʃuəl/
translation icon : intersexual
  • Today we call these two forms intrasexual and intersexual selection, respectively.

Examples

  • In the 100 years following the publication of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, sexual selection gained widespread, though not universal, acceptance among evolutionary biologists as a result of a considerable body of research (Campbell 1972), although intersexual selection continued to be debated.

    Academic text (2002)

  • It would be entirely at home in any modern biology textbook, or the introduction to practically any contemporary paper on intersexual signalling.

    Blog text (2)

  • We tested whether women use red clothing as a sexual signal in intersexual interaction.

    Blog text (21)

  • The intersexual species display a unique combination of traits from both male and female counterparts.

  • In nature, intersexual behavior can influence mating strategies between different animal species.

  • The research focused on intersexual characteristics, highlighting traits that exist between traditional male and female definitions.

Surface Forms

intersexual positive

Morphology

intersexual = sexual (transparent) = inter + sex + ual

The formation is a straightforward prefixation of 'inter-' to 'sexual', yielding 'existing or occurring between the sexes'.

Etymology

Intersexual combines inter- meaning 'between' and sexual from 'sex'. It refers to things that happen or exist between males and females, so it means 'between the sexes'.