Meaning

noun someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex

adjective sexually attracted to members of your own sex

originBorrowed from German homosexual, from homo- (“same”) + sexual (“relating to sex or sexuality”), coined by Karl Maria Kertbeny in 1868, and popularized in Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (2nd ed. 1887, in German) and Charles Gilbert Chaddock's 1892 English translation thereof (compare bisexual), displacing the slightly older term Uranian. Equivalent to homo- + -sexual.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0