Saturday, September 17, 2005

Interesting Words

The opposite of MISOGYNIST (someone who hates women) is supposedly MISANDRIST (someone who hates men). This is not to be confused with the word MISANTHROPE which would be someone who hates manKIND - i.e., regardless of gender, anyone who is HUMAN would be despised by a misanthrope.

Strangely enough I couldn't find MISANDRIST on the Merriam-Webster dictionary site... uhless I was willing to sign up for the UNABRIDGED version (for $$).
To quote, when I type in misandrist or misandry at www.merriam.com, this message pops up:
misandrist is one of more than 1,000,000 entries available at
Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com

Maybe the editors at www.merriam.com figure you should have to pay to hate men but hating women (and therefore knowing what to call yourself) is free of charge.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ellie, who in their right mind would want to hate all Men or all Women anyway? I can understand having a bit of disgust for the human race, in general... But we are fearfully and wonderfully made. I hope you have a wonderful week.
Love in Christ,
Dennis Gaunt

Ellie said...

Well, Dennis, unfortunately there are both kinds of people in this world.... Who in their right mind would want to be a pedophile? or a serial killer? or a rapist? But those words abound in the newspapers in these days.
In general, there are those that just hate everyone. Who in their right mind would want to be hateful? And the answer to that is, "right mind" is the key phrase.
Elle

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU so much for your beautiful comment to my recent entry, it made me smile. Thank you for dropping by and reaching out.

Ian T. said...

You might enjoy Dale Spender's book, Man Made Language. It's from a while ago, but she makes a lot of (still relevant) points about the sexism inherent in modern language that could so easily be redressed.