• misandry •
Pronunciation: mis-æn-dri • Hear it!Part of Speech: Noun, mass (no plural)
Meaning: The hatred of men or the male sex, man-hating.
Notes: We at alphaDictionary are often asked what is the masculine correlate of misogyny, the hatred of women, a word that often pops up in connection with the "@me_too" movement. The antonym of misogyny is NOT misanthropy", which is the hatred of all mankind, male and female. A person struggling with misandry is a misandrist.
In Play: Today's word often pops up in conversations about feminism: "It is important not to misconstrue the thrust of feminism as any kind of misandry." Rarely does feminism lead to misandry: "Susan's bad experiences with her last three boyfriends has left her something of a misandrist."
Word History: This Good Word comes to us from Greek misandros "man-hating", based on miso- "hatred" + aner, andr- "man, adult male". The Greek word is akin to Albanian njeri and nar- "man, person". Armenian aïr "man, person" also descends from the same Proto-Indo-European root, ner- "man, strong". The root of this word also took on a suffix which led to Greek anthropos "man, human, person", found in anthropology and misanthropy, mentioned above. However, this last word was used to refer to "man" in the generic sense of a person of either sex. (This is the 2900th Good Word in our series since 2004. We should make 3000 uniquely described words this year. Stay tuned. To help out, read the appeal in the website news.)
