urning means A homosexual person, especially a man. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why “urning” is a great word
URNING — [Noun] A term for a homosexual person, especially a man, within 19th-century sexological taxonomy. From German Urning, from Latin Uranus (the Greek god of the sky; used here as a root for Uranian, relating to a concept of homosexual love), coined in the 1860s by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Unlike "Uranian" (which conjures a broader, poetic ideal) or "homophile" (which argues for love and civic fellowship), "urning" is a clinical specimen, a creature pinned and labeled in a cabinet of human types. It is the rustle of a ledger page in a doctor's study, the sterile ink of a medical journal entry, and the silent weight of a word meant to explain a self to a world that demanded an explanation—a fragile attempt to find a name for what had only ever been a feeling, thereby making the mysterious merely medical.
Etymology
From German Urning, from Latin Uranus; see Uranian for more.
noun
- A homosexual person, especially a man.“The urning loves and deifies the male object of his affections, just as a man idealizes the woman he loves.”