Quote: knockersbumpMKII "Even the word homosexual was an invented word from the 19thC. '"
Interesting. Guilty of an awful lot of this, the Victorians. They replaced a lot of traditional English words that referred to things they considered distasteful and replaced them with new words or imported French words.
For example, bog or lavatory were replaced with "toilet", scent by "perfume" and fukk by "to make love". The latter really gets my goat as fukk is the only traditionally correct word for that act and was only demonised and made into a "swear word" (whatever those really are) by the pious Victorians. I try to use "proper" English as much as possible in a feeble attempt to defy them.
What was the original word for "homosexual"?