misogyny

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek μισογυνία (misogunía),^[2][3][4][5] according to Etymonline, Dictionary.com and the Shorter Oxford through New Latin misogynia,^[6][7][8] from μισογύνης (misogúnēs, “woman-hater”) and the suffix -ία (-ía).^[2][8][5] The Greek compound is formed from μισο- (miso-, “hating”), the source of miso-, and γυνή (gunḗ, “woman”),^[2][3][8] from Proto-Indo-European *gʷen- (“woman”),^[8] which is also the source of queen.^[5] Barnhart adds that misogyny may in some cases be a back-formation from misogynist (1620).^[5] The Greek word also gave Italian misoginia (1598, in Florio), French misogynie (1812) and German Misogynie (1789 or earlier).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Hatred of women: 1656, in Blount's Glossographia;^[2][5][4] Etymonline also dates it to the 1650s.^[8] The agent noun misogynist, a woman-hater, came first, in 1620.^[2][8][5]

Semantic evolution

The word kept its first sense, but the OED now defines it more widely as hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against, women.^[2][9] Johnson (1755) entered it as "hatred of women", deriving it from the Greek words for "I hate" and "woman".^[10] Its opposite philogyny, love of women, is recorded from the 1620s.^[8] The adjective use of misogynist is recorded from 1920.^[2]

Timeline

• 1620 – misogynist, a woman-hater.^[2][5]
• 1656 – hatred of women, in Blount's Glossographia.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. Hatred or dislike of women, or prejudice against them: The essay traces the misogyny of medieval sermons.^[11][4][2]

Word family

• misogynic
• misogynist
• misogynistic

Related words

• misandry
• misanthropy
• philogyny
• gynaecology
• queen

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins