How to Use heterosexual in a Sentence

heterosexual

1 of 2 adjective
  • Drag Race has had a heterosexual male drag queen, and a woman drag queen.
    — Joe Lynch, Billboard, 1 Sep. 2022
  • These are the most heterosexual movies of the season, possibly of the year, maybe even of all time.
    — Carrie Wittmer, Vulture, 25 Dec. 2022
  • Willis, who is heterosexual, bawls much like Carl Bean.
    — Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 11 May 2026
  • Does the female half of a heterosexual couple wear an engagement ring, while the male half doesn’t?
    — Jill Filipovic, CNN, 2 June 2022
  • And that's one big thing that in the context of heterosexual relationships has changed quite a bit.
    — Gili Malinsky, CNBC, 17 Oct. 2025
  • But during the last decade, the infection has spread to more heterosexual men and women.
    — Aria Bendix, NBC News, 7 Nov. 2023
  • For heterosexual women, their frustrations and pains have come from men.
    — Hanna Lustig, Glamour, 12 Oct. 2022
  • In my mind, white, heterosexual businessmen who shouted stock prices into their phones wore suits.
    — André-Naquian Wheeler, Vogue, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Rodgers is a heterosexual married man with children.
    — Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 14 Mar. 2026
  • For its first half, Ahn’s film bends over backward to placate to heterosexual viewers and is all the weaker for it.
    — Robert Daniels, Los Angeles Times, 2 June 2022
  • He was known for helping heterosexual couples who yearned to become parents.
    — Stephanie Nolasco, Fox News, 22 May 2022
  • And, as a heterosexual couple, wasn’t living in sin our final, sole, tiny act of rebellion?
    — Eva Wiseman, Vogue, 7 May 2026
  • But that’s just one obstacle to having the same rights as married heterosexual couples in the country.
    — Aditi Sangal, CNN, 4 June 2023
  • There are none of the heterosexual dynamics that straight women in particular are so tired of.
    — Daisy Jones, Vogue, 20 Jan. 2026
  • In heterosexual relationships, the women most of the time, of course.
    — Beth Ann Mayer, Parents, 1 Feb. 2024
  • The memorial also attracted a steady flow of heterosexual teenagers and young adults.
    — Tim Craig, Anchorage Daily News, 25 Nov. 2022
  • The series didn’t break through because heterosexual men suddenly came around.
    — Jennifer Obel, Chicago Tribune, 5 Jan. 2026
  • Dana had returned to a heterosexual lifestyle.
    — Literary Hub, 7 Jan. 2026
  • Besides, her height and androgyny meant that some of the heterosexual coupling that her friends fell into was not quite available to her.
    — Literary Hub, 19 Aug. 2025
  • For one thing, her very white and very heterosexual focus seems markedly narrow in 2022.
    — Molly Fischer, The New Yorker, 21 July 2022
  • About 1% of all married, heterosexual parents with children under the age of 15 are stay-at-home dads this year.
    — Megan Leonhardt, Fortune, 6 Dec. 2022
  • The title refers to the fact that Jackson and Sharp, who are gay, play hyper-macho, heterosexual jerks.
    — Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post, 18 Oct. 2023
  • These laws did not affect HIV testing rates for heterosexual adults.
    — Nathaniel M. Tran, The Conversation, 10 Apr. 2026
  • This is a film about the strained and ever-shifting tectonic plates of heterosexual relationships, above all else.
    — Nadine Smith, Pitchfork, 8 Nov. 2023
  • The clinic then began seeing heterosexual couples where they were seen by male and female therapists.
    — Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore Sun, 21 Apr. 2022
  • They were designed for heterosexual couples, where only the husband works, while the wife raises the family.
    — Julia Rodgers, Fortune, 3 Oct. 2025
  • The virus was ignored by the mainstream press for years except when cases were reported in women, children or heterosexual men.
    — Jason Mast, STAT, 13 June 2022
  • Research shows that the earnings gap between heterosexual spouses doubles between two years before the birth of their first child and one year after.
    — Mark Travers, Forbes, 17 Feb. 2024
  • For people who are cisgender or heterosexual, this is a way to sort of reclaim that identity in a really public way.
    — TIME, 27 Oct. 2023
  • For a whole lot of heterosexual couples, this dynamic is a familiar and frustrating one.
    — Jill Filipovic, CNN, 1 Nov. 2022

heterosexual

2 of 2 noun
  • The court ruled that the police had been right to do so, and that the right to privacy was reserved for heterosexuals.
    — Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 28 June 2019
  • Most of the people in power—the gatekeepers—are white male heterosexuals.
    — Bon Appétit, 4 Oct. 2019
  • At the time, shows like Donahue and Oprah showed the vitriol that many heterosexuals aimed at gay people.
    — S. D. Chrismon, The Root, 15 June 2018
  • All his donors were white and had to be married heterosexuals, among other criteria, and the bank would only supply sperm to women who were the same.
    — Kat Eschner, Smithsonian, 9 June 2017
  • For heterosexuals, however, the outcome of the second and third hypotheses would be the same.
    — The Economist, 12 Oct. 2017
  • One simply cannot applaud cis white heterosexual males enough for doing the bare minimum required of a human being.
    — Hayley Maitland, Vogue, 14 Dec. 2022
  • Underneath the heterosexuals were the tentative notices for young gay men and women.
    — Douglas Stuart, The New Yorker, 6 Jan. 2020
  • Shifting our wider definition of family is not just about including those who are childfree or prospective parents who sit outside of the heterosexual, cis norm.
    — Sadhbh O'Sullivan, refinery29.com, 13 Feb. 2022
  • But the state has seen an uptick in gonorrhea cases among heterosexuals under 25, especially women.
    — Lynne Terry, OregonLive.com, 13 July 2017
  • Baldwin refused to play this role for white, heterosexual society and instead turned his critical gaze back on white heterosexuals, forcing them to look in the mirror.
    — Literary Hub, 24 Feb. 2026
  • At the same time, online dating was veering toward one-night-stands or afternoon hookups through mobile apps like Grindr (for gay men) and Tinder (mostly for heterosexuals).
    — Ann Powers, Billboard, 7 Sep. 2017
  • Also, there is not a single minute of film in which Evan Hansen comes across as heterosexual, which is a problem when the main driver of the plot is Evan’s unrequited love for a girl.
    — Kyle Smith, National Review, 23 Sep. 2021
  • The legislation also discriminates against gay men by setting the age of consent for them at 16 years old, compared with 14 years old for heterosexuals, the group said.
    — Susannah Cullinane and Andreas Preuss, CNN, 24 June 2017
  • Though PrEP has been embraced by gay and trans Americans, it is prescribed less often to heterosexuals over 50 or women of any age.
    — Michael Scaturro | Kff Health News, ABC News, 7 Nov. 2023
  • Demonizing immigrants and minimizing the value of anyone who isn't a white, god-fearing heterosexual?
    — Star Tribune, 7 July 2021
  • Those social groups were categorized as white people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, men and Christians, among others.
    — Lilly Price, Baltimore Sun, 6 Mar. 2024
  • Adding to the sense of unreality is the utter lack, in a book teeming with brothels and game parlors, of any courtesans catering to (or anyone having) preferences other than the heterosexual.
    — Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times, 14 Dec. 2021
  • Wilde wrote as a voice from Fullerton’s London years, and Fullerton in Paris had left all that behind to become an enthusiastic heterosexual.
    — Colm Tóibín, The New York Review of Books, 20 Aug. 2020
  • The story takes places in an alternate reality where heterosexuals are an oppressed minority and follows a girl bullied for being straight, culminating with her suicide.
    — Alex Horton, Washington Post, 28 June 2019
  • Now the 27-year-old delegate argued against him, never mentioning his name, urging a ban on the practice of trying to convert young gay, lesbian or transgender people into heterosexuals.
    — Erin Cox, baltimoresun.com, 5 Apr. 2018
  • While Calvin Klein is known for pushing the envelope, people are accusing the brand of queerbaiting, since Bella identifies as heterosexual.
    — Carolyn Twersky, Seventeen, 31 Aug. 2020
  • In the post-Edwardian period, upper class men were more likely to already understand the world in terms of heterosexuals and homosexuals, with a bright and absolute line dividing the two.
    — Hugh Ryan, Town & Country, 16 Sep. 2019
  • Yet other configurations are certainly possible, given that heterosexuals aren’t the only ones doing the seducing, as well as the heightened gatekeeping demanded of us all these days.
    — Laura Kipnis, The Cut, 10 June 2018
  • Consequently, a population of heterosexuals who are not in monogamous long-term relationships are now newly ineligible to donate blood.
    — Benjamin Ryan, NBC News, 7 Aug. 2023
  • The white working classes also resent their cultural marginalization by liberal elites, who champion diversity while presenting whites, heterosexuals, and men as the enemies of progress.
    — Andreas Wimmer, Foreign Affairs, 12 Feb. 2019
  • It was based on a submerged reality, which was that many gay men and especially lesbians had always been in committed relationships — and that that experience was a vital bridge with heterosexuals, who usually comprised the rest of our families.
    — Andrew Sullivan, Daily Intelligencer, 23 June 2017
  • Heteropatriarchy — a system of society in which men and heterosexuals (especially heterosexual men) are privileged, dominant and hold power.
    — Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, 13 Aug. 2019
  • The eight new infections, all diagnosed since February, involve individuals described to be heterosexuals, drug users and recently homeless, The Seattle Times reported.
    — Alexandria Hein, Fox News, 31 Aug. 2018
  • National lawmakers are negotiating a revision of the criminal code, including provisions pushed by Islamic parties that would imprison gay people or unmarried cohabiting heterosexuals.
    — Anita Rachman, WSJ, 12 Apr. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'heterosexual.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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