bæddel

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English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Learned borrowing from Old English bæddel (“effeminate man, hermaphrodite”). Popularized on the social media and blogging website Tumblr in the year 2014.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • IPA(key): /ˈbeɪ.dəl/, /ˈbæ-/

Noun[edit]

bæddel (plural bæddels)

  1. (slang, LGBT, sometimes derogatory) A transgender woman or transfeminine individual, especially one who holds that transgender individuals to whom transmisogyny does not apply (chiefly transmasculine and non-binary individuals who were assigned female at birth, who are TME or "transmisogyny-exempt"), are capable of utilizing, exploiting, or otherwise benefiting from transmisogyny.
    • 2017, L.E., "Let's talk about Bæddelism", Medium, 3 October 2017:
      There is a strong trans sapphic and transfem4transfem trend within bæddel circles, though I wouldn’t say that romantic interest in fellow transfems is a requirement of claiming the term. Merely a personal prioritising of transfems in relationships, platonic or otherwise, as well as with one’s politics.

Old English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

  • bǣddel

Etymology[edit]

Uncertain. Seemingly cognate with Old High German pad (“hermaphrodite”). Usually taken to be related to (an unattested Old English root of) Middle English badde (“wicked, wretched, bad”).[1] Possibly related to Old English bædan (“to defile”) (although Fulk questions this,[1] and the very existence of the verb has been called into question[2][3]) and/or to Old English bædling (although the precise meaning of this word is uncertain and it has sometimes been suggested to derive from bedd instead).[4]

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

bæddel m

  1. an effeminate man
  2. hermaphrodite

Declension[edit]

Declension of bæddel (strong a-stem)
Case Singular Plural
nominative bæddel bæddlas
accusative bæddel bæddlas
genitive bæddles bæddla
dative bæddle bæddlum

Descendants[edit]

  • ⇒ Middle English: badde, bad
    • English: bad
    • Scots: bad

References[edit]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 David Clark, Between Medieval Men (2009), page 63, footnotes, citing Robert D. Fulk, 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', page 26
  2. ^ Stanford University Publications: University series. Language and literature (1954), volumes 12-14, page 190: "*bædan. At Ps. 78, 1 in the Canterbury Psalter coinquinaverunt is glossed bæddon. From this gloss HD enters bædan, 'to defile', and HEW enters bǣdan, 'beflecken', relating it to English bad and OE bǣddel, 'hermaphrodite'. It is true that the lemma calls for a meaning 'to defile'; but since the glosses in this Psalter show a notoriously free hand in the attempt to interpret the Latin it is a rather risky source from which to postulate a word not documented elsewhere."
  3. ^ Richard Coates, in North-western European Language Evolution: NOWELE (1983), issues 11-12, page 100: "this bædan, in the grammatical form bæddon, glosses coinquinaueri (Psalm 78, 1). This word stands in all MSS. with the text of Psalterium Romanum, where those derived from Psalterium Gallicanum have polluerunt. It may be that the verb coinquinare which we know to mean 'to defile' was not familiar to the scribe and that he played safe by substituting the relatively colourless term bædan 'to afflict'. The verb bædan with its short vowel may therefore be a ghost."
  4. ^ Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller (1898), “bædling”, in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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