English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From woman +‎ -ize.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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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 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

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Translations

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