antimasker

See also: anti-masker

English

Alternative forms

• anti-masker

Etymology 1

From anti- +‎ mask +‎ -er. Likely influenced by anti-vaxxer.

Noun

antimasker (plural antimaskers)

1. (healthcare, politics, neologism) A person who is opposed to the practice or mandate of wearing masks.

   Antonym: pro-masker

   • 2017, Brian Falkner, Stubborn Seed of Hope:

     On one side of the argument was a woman named Claire Newbourne, an anti-masker, a member of a group opposed to the government regulations on Marburg.

   • 2020 September 22, Hope Moses, “Protecting essential workers must be a priority”, in The Marquette Tribune, volume 105, number 5, page 11:

     Every time a citizen disobeys mask rules by not wearing one, or wearing it incorrectly, they endanger essential workers who have already risked their lives to service them in restaurant, store, and many other public settings. In an odd way, anti-maskers see this as being patriotic.

   • 2021 August 8, Francisco Alvarado, “‘I don’t see how it can be safe’: Florida schools on frontlines of state’s mask war”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Beightol, who is the administrator for several Facebook pages where public schools teachers can vent, said educators fall into three categories: vocal pro-maskers, vocal anti-maskers and pro-maskers who stay out of the line of fire.

Etymology 2

From antimask +‎ -er.

Noun

antimasker (plural antimaskers)

1. Alternative form of antimasquer.
   • 1884, Dr. Finkenbrink, An essay on the date, plot and sources of Shakespere's 'A midsummer night's dream':

     The antimaskers are not at all concerned in the action; they are led into fill up the intervals with a grotesque kind of merriment, or, their grotesque dances, and then sink into nothing.

   • 1903, Elbert Nevius Sebring Thompson, The Controversy Between the Puritans and the Stage:

     Then came groups of antimaskers giving a mirthful variety to the scene of splendor — a company of beggars riding on lean jades, another of birds, but, most popular of all with the civic Puritans who lined the streets, a mask satirizing those projectors who begged the illegal and unpopular patents of monopoly from the King.