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What does this word really mean?

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Words are living things.
They are born, they grow, they change. They carry the fingerprints of every century that touched them. Some words fade. Others explode into meanings their creators never imagined.
The word sex began as something cold and mathematical—a way to sort the world into halves. Today it sells cars, starts wars, and makes headlines.
This is the story of that transformation.
I

The Cut

Latin Origins · 500 BCE – 500 CE

"Before it meant anything else, sex meant separation—the knife that divides the world."

SECARE

/seˈkaː.re/

Latin verb: to cut, to sever, to divide

Classical Latin, from Proto-Italic *sekō

The story begins not with bodies, but with blades. The Latin verb secare meant to cut, to slice, to separate one thing from another. From this root grew sexus—a noun for the result of that cutting: a half, a category, a division.

SEXUS

/ˈsek.sus/

Latin noun: a division, a category, a half of the whole

From secare + -tus (result suffix)

In ancient Rome, sexus was as mundane as a census form. It answered a simple question: Which half? Male or female? This category or that? There was nothing salacious about the word. It appeared in legal documents, philosophical treatises, and agricultural manuals with equal indifference.

P

Pliny the Elder

The Natural Cataloguer

23–79 CE

  • Roman author and natural philosopher
  • Encyclopedic 'Naturalis Historia' used 'sexus' extensively
  • Catalogued all living things by sex as a primary division
  • Died observing the eruption of Vesuvius

"We observe that in all living creatures there exist two sexes."

— Naturalis Historia

Pliny wrote of the sexus of plants and animals with the same clinical detachment we might use for height or weight. The word was cold, rational, mathematical. It divided the world into two—and that was all.

But words rarely stay still. The cut that creates them is only the beginning.

Every word carries the blade that made it. Sexus remembered the cut.

II

The Sacred Division

Medieval Christianity · 500–1400 CE

"When the Church inherited the word, it dressed sex in theology—division became destiny."

Medieval Christianity transformed sexus from mere category to divine order. Male and female were no longer just halves of a whole—they were God's intentional design, written into creation from the first chapter of Genesis.

Masculum et feminam creavit eos.
Male and female He created them.

— Genesis 1:27 (Vulgate), c. 400 CE

Church fathers like Augustine and Aquinas wrote extensively about the nature of the sexes, always in terms of spiritual hierarchy and cosmic purpose. The word remained clinical but gained metaphysical weight. To belong to a sexus was to inherit a destiny—specific virtues, specific sins, specific paths to salvation.

T

Thomas Aquinas

The Theologian of Difference

1225–1274

  • Dominican friar and scholastic philosopher
  • Summa Theologica codified sexual difference as divine intent
  • 'Sexus' in his writings meant essential nature, not merely anatomy
  • Argued that the sexes have different rational capacities

"The woman was made to be a help to man. But she was not fitted to be a help to man except in generation."

— Summa Theologica

For medieval Christians, the division of sexes was not arbitrary taxonomy but cosmic architecture. Each sex had its place in the great chain of being, its role in the divine economy. The word sex had not yet approached the act—it still meant the category. But the category now trembled with theological significance.

The division was no longer neutral. It had become moral.

III

The Botanical Turn

Renaissance Science · 1600–1750

"Linnaeus did something radical—he gave plants a sex life."

In 1735, a Swedish botanist published a book that would scandalize Europe and revolutionize science. Carl Linnaeus proposed organizing all of nature—every plant, every animal, every living thing—by a single principle: sex.

SYSTEMA SEXUALE

The Sexual System

Linnaeus's classification scheme organizing plants by male and female reproductive parts

Systema Naturae, 1735

This was revolutionary—and to many, outrageous. Linnaeus described flowers having "husbands" and "wives," petals serving as "bridal beds." His language was deliberately provocative. He was not just naming parts; he was insisting that sex was everywhere in nature, that reproduction was the key to understanding life itself.

L

Carl Linnaeus

Father of Sexual Taxonomy

1707–1778

  • Swedish botanist who created binomial nomenclature
  • Made sexual reproduction the basis of plant classification
  • His 'sexual system' organized plants by stamens and pistils
  • Accused of bringing obscenity into botany

"The petals serve as bridal beds which the Creator has so gloriously arranged, adorned with such noble bed curtains, and perfumed with so many soft scents."

— Systema Naturae

Critics accused Linnaeus of projecting human sin onto innocent nature, of finding "loathsome harlotry" in the lily and the rose. One botanist called his system "too smutty for English readers." But Linnaeus had won. His system worked. And the word sex began its slow migration from category to reproduction.

Before Linnaeus

Sex: the category of male or female

Standard usage
After Linnaeus

Sex: the category, AND the means of reproduction

Scientific expansion

The word learned a new trick. It now pointed not just to what something was, but to what it did.

IV

The Victorian Paradox

Scientific Prudery · 1800–1900

"The Victorians dissected sex in laboratories while blushing at the word."

The 19th century was the age of taxonomy, classification, and ruthless scientific inquiry. Darwin published on "sexual selection." Medical journals proliferated with studies of "sexual pathology." The word appeared more frequently in print than ever before—but always wrapped in Latin, always filtered through expertise.

D

Charles Darwin

Evolution's Sexual Theorist

1809–1882

  • English naturalist and biologist
  • 'The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex' (1871)
  • Argued that sexual selection drives evolution
  • Made 'sex' a scientific term of profound importance

"Sexual selection depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex, in relation to the propagation of the species."

— The Descent of Man

Yet Victorian culture became increasingly prudish about the word itself. Polite society could not speak of "sex" directly—they invented euphemisms, circumlocutions, meaningful pauses. The same era that produced Psychopathia Sexualis produced families that covered piano legs for fear they were too suggestive.

The work is written in Latin where matters of a sexual nature are discussed, so as to prevent it from becoming the subject of common conversation.

— Richard von Krafft-Ebing, 1886

The word "sex" was now officially dangerous. It required gatekeeping. Doctors could use it; ladies could not. Scientists could publish it; novelists risked prosecution. The division that once meant "category" now meant something that required protection from.

The Victorians made sex both omnipresent and unspeakable. The paradox would not resolve for another century.

V

The Freudian Explosion

Psychoanalysis · 1900–1960

"Freud found sex everywhere—in dreams, in slips, in civilization itself."

Sigmund Freud did not invent modern sexuality, but he gave it a language. His work systematically linked "sex" not just to reproduction but to desire, to the unconscious, to the deep engines of human behavior. After Freud, sex was no longer just what bodies did—it was what psyches wanted.

F

Sigmund Freud

The Prophet of Desire

1856–1939

  • Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis
  • Placed sexuality at the center of human psychology
  • 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality' (1905)
  • Made 'sex' the key to understanding human nature

"The sexual life of adult women is a 'dark continent' for psychology."

— The Question of Lay Analysis

The word shifted dramatically. "Sexual" now modified thoughts, dreams, drives, complexes. The adjective form became as important as the noun. Everything could be sexual—childhood, creativity, neurosis, civilization itself.

By mid-century, when people said "sex," they increasingly meant the act itself—not the category. A split was forming. The original meaning was drifting away.

1900

Sex (n.): either of the two divisions of organic beings distinguished as male or female

Oxford English Dictionary
1929

Sex (n.): physical contact between individuals involving sexual stimulation

First documented use of 'sex' to mean the act

The word had finally crossed over. It no longer just divided—it desired.

VI

The Word Today

Contemporary Culture · 1960–Present

"Now the word contains multitudes—biology, pleasure, identity, power."

The sexual revolution of the 1960s completed the transformation. "Sex" became the primary term for intercourse. A new word—"gender"—split off to handle the original meaning of male/female category. A single word had divided into two, mirroring its own etymology.

THE SPLIT

SEX: biological characteristics; the act
GENDER: social/cultural identity; the role

Linguistic divergence, late 20th century

K

Alfred Kinsey

The Statistician of Desire

1894–1956

  • American biologist and sexologist
  • Kinsey Reports (1948, 1953) brought 'sex' into public discourse
  • Made private behavior a matter of scientific survey
  • His research remains controversial and influential

"The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform."

— Attributed

Today, "sex" appears everywhere: clickbait headlines, medical forms, dating apps, political debates. It sells cars and settles divorces. It's censored on some platforms and mandatory on others. The word that once coldly divided the world now provokes the full spectrum of human emotion.

secareTo Cut
sexusDivision
genderCategory
sexDesire

The blade that once divided the world now cuts in a different direction—toward intimacy, toward taboo, toward the unspeakable made speakable.

SEX

The Word That Divided Everything

Two thousand years ago, a Roman scribe wrote sexus on a census form. He was sorting, categorizing, dividing the world into manageable halves. He had no idea what he was starting.
Words are living things. They carry the fingerprints of every century that touched them. And this word—this three-letter accident of Latin conjugation—has been touched by everyone.
You will never hear it the same way again.