womanize

English

Alternative forms

• womanise (non-Oxford British spelling)

Etymology

woman +‎ -ize

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈwʊmənaɪz/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Verb

womanize (third-person singular simple present womanizes, present participle womanizing, simple past and past participle womanized)

1. (intransitive, said of a man) To flirt with and/or seduce, or attempt to seduce, women, especially lecherously.
2. (transitive, usually figuratively) To turn into a woman; to feminize.
   • a. 1587, Philip Sidney, “The First Booke”, in [Mary Sidney], editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia […] [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1593, →OCLC, folio 23, verso:

     [T]his effeminate loue of a wõman, doth ſo womanize a man, that (if hee yeeld to it) it will not onely make him an Amazon; but a launder, a diſtaff-ſpinner; or what ſo euer other vile occupation their idle heads can imagin and their weake hands performe.

     The original manuscript and 1590 edition have womaniſh instead.

   • 2000, Randy Lee Eickhoff, The sorrows‎^[1], page 84:

     Another bolt passed between Iucharba's legs, nearly womanizing him with its blast of heat. "EEEeeeYOW!" he howled.

   • 2000, Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible‎^[2], page 104:

     Samson himself is a gender paradox: while the focus on his hair links him with the women he pursues, it is also the source of his masculine strength, whose loss womanizes him.

   • 2008, Wendy Olmsted, The Imperfect Friend: Emotion and Rhetoric in Sidney, Milton and their Contexts‎^[3]:

     Love for a woman was believed to produce an especially dangerous kind of effeminacy. Following this line of thinking, Musidorus charges that Pyrocles' infatuation threatens to 'womanize' him

Derived terms

• womanizer, womaniser

Translations

seduce women lecherously

• Hebrew: הִתְפַּרְפֵּר (he) (hitparpér) (slang)