[Ads-l] antedating of 'demisexual', adj.

[James Eric Lawson]

Not in OED. With a lingering, sidelong look at Ben Zimmer's 2015 ADS-L
post ("Pan = pansexual", 29 May 2015), which links to "Among the New
Words" (AmSp 89.4 Winter 2014), and at Dictionary.com's postulation of a
2006 origin (the date referenced, possibly, in a recent *The Guardian*
article, "What does the dawn of demisexuals tell us?", 13 July 2021),
I've antedated the term to 1969. The sense used in 1969 derives, in
contrast to recent sense development, more immediately from the
classical sense of 'demi-' compounds, that is, 'half-sexual' or
'partially sexual':

<excerpt>
Moscoso's trip strip is entitled "Camel," a man who isn't sure whether
he's a man inside a box which might not be a box being visited by the
ubiquitous Mickey Jr., who then joins with him-her in a demi-sexual
fashion. Worth walking a mile for a puff of this.
<publication>The Daily Californian</publication>
<sectiontitle>The Weekly Magazine</sectiontitle>
<articletitle>Snatch Zap! Underground Comix</articletitle>
<author>Don Shenker</author>
<page>14</page>
<url>https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucbk.ark:/28722/h20z7181x&view=page&seq=8&skin=2021&size=300&q1=demi-sexual</url>
</excerpt>

-- 
James Eric Lawson

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